Mommy, mommy, mommy," your young son asks frantically. "Can we please buy a new PlayStation ®3 console with all of the games and the wireless controllers so that we don't have to sit near the television?" "No," you reply, "we can't afford to buy all of that!" Seemingly unperturbed by your rejection, your son comes back with "Then can we just buy one new game for our PlayStation ®2?" "Okay, I guess so," you answer, not realizing that your precocious son has taken a social psychology class and has just used the _____________ technique to get what he wanted.

The door in the face is a common persuasion technique studied in social psychology and can be described as an attempt to convince someone to comply by asking for an exaggerated or large request that the persuaded person will most likely reject, followed by then soliciting a more reasonable request that the persuaded subject will most likely agree on, influenced by their feelings of guilt.

In this particular case, the precocious son asked her mother to buy him a PlayStation 3 console. That request got inmediatly turned down by his mother. He then proceeds to ask for his original request, which is to buy a PlayStation 2, request that her mother agrees on.

The son used the Door-in-the-face technique.