Commitment and Consistency in Public Relationships

People prefer to be seen as consistent so that they're not incongruent in terms of what they say and what they do. We don't like people who are all over the board who we can't predict or count on. If we make a commitment especially in public, we're significantly more likely to be congruent with it if we are asked to do so at a later stage in the interaction. There was a Chicago restaurant that was once having a problem with people not showing up at the time of their reservation. No shows at Gordon's restaurant dropped by 64% that day and never went back up.