236 Curr Psychol (2010) 29:235–246 Have you visited the city centre of your hometown lately to shop on a Saturday- afternoon? Then the following scenario has a good chance of accurately reflecting what has happened to you then. While chatting with your partner or friend, you spotted a group of representatives for a charity a few yards away and they have spotted you. Your first impulse was to avoid them by circumventing the group. Your attempt failed and before you could blink twice, you were already answering a few ‘harmless’ questions on what it meant to you to be a responsible citizen and which types of charity you already supported. Then the target request for a (substantial) financial donation to a novel cause was presented. Have you complied? Then you are not alone! Persuasion agents such as fundraisers, sales representatives, advertisers, politicians, and marketers are often stunningly successful in feeding the flame of desire or reducing resistance to influence on the part of the target consumer. A host of social influence techniques can be employed to get people to say “yes” to an offer or request they were not planning to yield to in advance (Cialdini and Trost 1998), and more often than not, these techniques accomplish what they were set out to do. But what is the key mechanism responsible for this effectiveness? And why is it that we sometimes, or even in most instances, do not consciously realize that a sales trick is being played on us, and we are falling for it, head-first? A key objective of the present research is to address these questions. Mindlessness in Social Influence During the past four decades, a variety of influence techniques have been studied, including the Foot-In-The-Door technique (Freedman and Fraser 1966), the Door-In-The-Face technique (Cialdini et al. 1975), and—more recently—the Disrupt-Then-Reframe technique (Fennis et al. 2004). In recent years, this research has increasingly emphasized processes that are subtle, indirect and outside conscious awareness of the target. More specifically, the notion of automaticity or “mindlessness” (Langer 1992) has been forwarded as the cornerstone of all influence (Cialdini and Goldstein 2004). Under these conditions of reduced mental alertness, the target is thought to fall back on habit and routine and hence will employ ‘shortcuts’ or simple heuristics to arrive at a decision. Use of these heuristics will generally increase the likelihood of compliance (Cialdini 1993). Heuristics the target will resort to in these circumstances include the principles of consistency (the propensity to show congruent behavior across situations), reciprocity (the felt obligation to return a favor) or liking. Indeed, research is replete with examples of the use of these heuristics in social influence situations (see Cialdini and Goldstein 2004 for an overview). For instance, several studies on the Foot-In-The-Door (FITD) technique (whereby the target is initially presented with a small request, followed by a more substantial request) have shown that employing the technique generally results in increased compliance, primarily because the target wants to behave consistently across situations (see Burger 1999). That is, compliance with the first, small request, induces the self- perception that one “is the kind of person to comply with these kinds of requests” which increases the odds of compliance with the more substantial second request.