This doesn’t sound like quite the same sort of thing.
If you put a sign up, you see the sign, and it is present as a physical reminder. With the intangible good deeds, there isn’t such a token. I suspect that actually making tokens (gold stars, candies, money, Whatever.) for the good deeds in the style of the original post would not have a foot-in-the-door effect.
Pick a cause (say, VillageReach). In two similar locations, run a donation drive for it; in the first, have a bake sale (or other quickly consumed goods), in the second, sell those little cause-promoting bracelets (or other lasting tokens). Test altruism in both an hour later (purchase of moral satisfaction) and a week later (foot-in-the-door).
Also, a study on smokers showed that asking people to stop smoking for a short time makes them more likely to accept stopping smoking for several weeks, so tokens seem unecessary for foot-in-the-door.
This doesn’t sound like quite the same sort of thing.
If you put a sign up, you see the sign, and it is present as a physical reminder. With the intangible good deeds, there isn’t such a token. I suspect that actually making tokens (gold stars, candies, money, Whatever.) for the good deeds in the style of the original post would not have a foot-in-the-door effect.
Can we check this somehow?
Pick a cause (say, VillageReach). In two similar locations, run a donation drive for it; in the first, have a bake sale (or other quickly consumed goods), in the second, sell those little cause-promoting bracelets (or other lasting tokens). Test altruism in both an hour later (purchase of moral satisfaction) and a week later (foot-in-the-door).
Also, a study on smokers showed that asking people to stop smoking for a short time makes them more likely to accept stopping smoking for several weeks, so tokens seem unecessary for foot-in-the-door.