Abstract

<jats:p>This study reports the results of an experiment examining whether presenting a request that included the word “please” would facilitate greater compliance than would a request that did not include the word please. We hypothesized that the plead request (incorporating the
word please) would elicit higher rates of compliance than would a nonplead request. Participants consisted of 165 male and 139 female undergraduates, aged 18-24, from a private, comprehensive university in the Midwest of the USA. Participants were surveyed by 8 callers, trained to uniformly
verbalize the requests for compliance. Results showed that a greater proportion of participants in the nonplead condition complied than did in the plead condition (χ<jats:sup>2</jats:sup> = 6.432, <jats:italic>df</jats:italic> = 1, <jats:italic>p</jats:italic> &lt; 0.05). The implications of this analysis are discussed.</jats:p>