In the nature of advice to threateners, taking perceptions of the threatened into account, this article might have been called the limits to threats. It attacks the idea that size of threat is the major determinant of responses to it. It postulates need for control on the part of the threatened as a key aspect of the threat situation as a two‐party transaction. The argument is that contingent threats which permit the threatened party a sense of control — and of cognitive control which clearly permits him in his eyes to avoid the danger the threatener communicates — are far more effective as persuasive messages than either noncontingent threats or threats which appear to be noncontingent. Some data may be interpreted as suggesting that being powerful may lead one to threaten sufficiently as to delay reaching a solution between pa