The literature on persuasion and compliance provides descriptions of various procedures increasing the likelihood of compliance (see: Cialdini, 2001; Pratkanis, 2007; Dolinski, 2016; O’Keefe, 2016 for review). One such technique is the fear-then-relief strategy. In many experiments, it has been shown that when people experience a source of fear that is then rapidly removed, they are more likely to comply with a subsequent request. For example, in one set of studies participants were led to believe they had received a parking ticket or were caught jaywalking, which then turned out to be a false alarm. The ticket was in fact an advert for a hair formula, while the person blowing a whistle on the jaywalker was not the expected police officer, but rather a smiling jokester (Dolinski and Nawrat, 1998). In such cases, people were more likely to comply with a request to fill out a burdensome questionnaire or make a donation to an orphanage. How can the mechanism of compliance in such situations be understood? This finding is usually explained by noting that the state of sudden and unexpected relief from fear produces a temporal mindlessness (Dolinski, 2001, 2016). This interpretation is in accordance with the results of the experiment by Dolinski and Nawrat (1998), inspired by a study conducted by Langer et al. (1978). The participants were individuals crossing the street where it was not allowed. In one condition the fact was just recorded, while in the second the participants heard a police whistle (produced by the experimenter) as they crossed the street. Next, each participant was approached by a confederate asking for a donation. As in the original study by Langer et al. (1978), he formulated either the request only, the request with a real justification, or the request with a placebic justification. The results showed that in the control condition people usually behaved in a thoughtful manner. They hardly ever decided to give a donation when the request was not accompanied by any justification, nor when the justification was placebic, and more often made a donation when it was explained to them who was collecting the money and for what purpose. The participants in the fear-then-relief conditions reacted differently. In this case, it was enough to have any kind of justification at all for participants to be more likely to reach into their wallets when compared to conditions in which the request was made without accompanying justification. It also turned out that under fear-then-relief condition, participants approached with unusual messages (e.g., request with placebic justification or without any justification) hardly ever asked any questions about the aim of the action or campaign and the organizer of it. This pattern of results is then quite congruent with the assumption that in a situation involving a sudden withdrawal of the sources of an emotion, mindlessness is caused by temporary deficits of cognitive resources. This, in turn, is because cognitive resources are directed elsewhere, such as turning off the fear-activated program that is no longer adequate and/or coping with the physiological consequences of the sudden drop of excitement. One may therefore say that when an individual is in such an unusual state, the cognitive system is busy recovering its own balance. This interpretation is supported by results obtained in several other experiments (e.g., Dolinski et al., 2002; Nawrat and Dolinski, 2007; Dolinska and Dolinski, 2014; Kaczmarek, 2014).

In the present paper, however, we would like to offer another cognitive-motivational framework for the fear-then-relief phenomenon, which is complementary rather than competitive to that presented above. It is based on the assumption that the rapid change of emotions is connected with feelings of uncertainty and confusion. The positive response to the request is a form of coping with uncertainty (see van den Bos, 2001, 2009). If this is the case, people less tolerant of ambiguity are more prone to respond with positive behavior. Such people are characterized by a high need for closure (NFC) (Kruglanski, 2013). NFC is defined as “an individual’s desire for a firm answer to a question and an aversion toward ambiguity” (Kruglanski and Webster, 1996, p. 264).

According to Kruglanski’s Lay epistemology theory (Kruglanski, 2013), NFC is one of the three epistemic motivations which affect people’s process of knowledge generating and validating. The theory suggests a two-stage process in which during the first stage the specific content (the hypothesis) is created. This stage is termed “seizing.” The second stage is devoted to validation of the cognitive content. The validation stage involves an examination of the consistency between the hypothesis and the person’s available knowledge, as well as of alternative explanations to consistent or inconsistent cognitive content generated by the individual. A central factor in this stage is the epistemic motivation of the individual. The epistemic motivation affects the validation process through two mechanisms: “freezing” and “unfreezing.” Epistemic freezing causes the individual to shorten the validation process and accept the hypothesis in question as correct. In contrast, epistemic unfreezing prolongs the validation process, which in turn extends the period during which the individual is exposed to uncertainty. NFC is an epistemic motivation which governs the “freezing-unfreezing” activity. When high, NFC increases the individual’s tendency to employ faster epistemic freezing and achieve faster certainty in the validity of the hypothesis. High NFC is also characterized by the use of “category based” processing (Fiske and Pavelchak, 1986; Brewer, 1988), non-systematic and heuristic processes. High-NFC individuals prefer to use holistic and rapid processing, crudely differentiated categories, black-and-white type solutions, and over-simplified dichotomizations. All these enable the individual to achieve the goal of avoiding uncertainty. In contrast, low NFC is associated with unfreezing. That is, low NFC is associated with a longer process of validation and extended period of uncertainty regarding the validity of the hypothesis in question. Low NFC is often associated with the use of “piecemeal” or “systematic processing,” which is manifested in vigilant behavior based on a systematic and effortful search for relevant information, its evaluation, and unbiased integration (Janis and Mann, 1977; Chaiken et al., 1989). It is important to note that NFC is often conceptualized as a dimension which, at its high pole, predisposes individuals to use cognitive structuring to achieve certainty. At its low pole, however, it is not associated with indifference or low motivation to achieve certainty, but with a high tendency toward piecemeal processes (Kruglanski and Webster, 1996). Finally, according to lay epistemology theory, NFC is both a trait-like characteristic, as well as situationally determined.

When applying the explanation of NFC to the fear-then-relief phenomenon, it can be suggested that compliance with the request frees individuals from the need to validate how they want to respond to the request. This in turn extends the uncertainty experienced in the situation. Therefore it is expected that participants’ NFC levels would moderate the effect of fear-then-relief. While individuals with high NFC will comply with a request after a fear-then-relief situation, low-NFC individuals who are less threatened by uncertainty will not.

To test the hypothesis on compliance, we performed a logistic regression in two steps. In the first step, we introduced the two independent variables (NFC and manipulation), and in the second step the interaction between the two variables. Table 1 shows that in the first step only the manipulation had a significant effect on compliance. The interaction in the second step was of marginal significance. In addition, we performed a regression analysis with the same independent variables on the second dependent variable (number of hours). Table 2 shows that in the first step only the manipulation (fear-then-relief vs. control condition) achieved significance. In the second step, the interaction term contributed significantly to the explanation of the dependent variable. To further explore the source of the interaction two simple slopes were calculated for high and low NFC individuals (one SD above and below the mean). The results show that while for low-NFC individuals the regression coefficient is not significant (b = 0.11, SE = 0.56, t = 0.21, p = 0.83, LLCI = -0.99, ULCI = 1.22), it is significant for high-NFC individuals (b = 2.14, SE = 0.55, t = 3.84, p = 0.002, LLCI = 1.03, ULCI = 3.24). Thus, the research hypothesis is confirmed. The effect of fear-then-relief on low-NFC individuals was lower than on high-NFC individuals. In fact, the effect of fear-then-relief exists only in the case of high-NFC individuals.

At the very beginning of the experiment, just after arriving at the laboratory, study participants signed a declaration stating that they expressed their informed consent to participation in a psychological experiment which would measure certain individual character traits, as well as reactions to various events (because of the necessity of inducing in the participants a state of unexpected fear followed by relief, it was not possible to give them full and detailed information about the experimental procedure). Immediately after the experiment, each study participant went through a thorough debriefing process. None of them expressed any reservations concerning the course of the experiment. The design and the experiment conditions for the study were approved by the local University of Social Science and Humanities Ethics Committee in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration.

DD – general idea of the research, design of the experiment, and manuscript preparation. BD – general idea of the research and manuscript preparation. YB-T – general idea of the research, data computing, and manuscript preparation.

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.