Are Your Most Compliant Customers Those Who Are Emotionally Disorganized?

People who were momentarily alarmed at what they believed were parking tickets on their windshields were subsequently 1.65 times more likely to comply with a street vendor’s request to purchase aromatic Indian sticks. Similarly, people were more likely to answer a questionnaire if the surveyor first asked, “Haven’t you lost your wallet?” (nothing had happened to the wallets). These experiments, by Dariusz Dolinski and Katarzyna Szczucka of Warsaw School of Social Services and Humanities in Poland, demonstrate that the “emotional disorganization” following apprehension and relief makes people more likely to comply with a request.