Benjamin Franklin not only entered the history books as one of the founding fathers of the USA, but is also mentioned in many psychology textbooks. His ingeniously simple method of turning an opposing politician into one of his closest allies and friends received a lot of attention, especially from social psychologists. But does the Benjamin Franklin method really work? Or can the Benjamin Franklin effect not be proven in empirical studies...?
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Studies and books:
Jecker, J., & Landy, D. (1969). Liking a person as a function of doing him a favour. Human relations, 22(4), 371-378.
Burck, E. (2016). New psychology of influence: exploring manipulation. BoD Books on Demand.
Burck, E. (2019). The manipulated brain: psychology of unconscious influence. BoD Books on Demand. __________________
About the Author: Eskil Burck, a psychology graduate, is a psychological consultant and textbook author. He teaches psychology for Kalaidos University of Applied Sciences (Zurich). His psychology podcast "psychologie-lernen.de" consistently ranked #1 on iTunes in the "Education" category. His books "Angst - was hilft wirklich ...?", "Das manipulierte Gehirn" and "Neue Psychologie der Beeinflussung" became Amazon bestsellers. Even in his spare time, he enjoys reading studies...😅🙈 For more information, visit: www.psychologie-lernen.de
Benjamin Franklin was not just one of the founders of the United States of America,
he was also a founder of a social psychology technique which was later named after him.
It's a really quite clever technique because it's really difficult to realize that you are
just being influenced and it's all quite simple because all you have to do is to ask another
person for a favor. Something we usually tend to think well it's probably not good to do so
because maybe the other person will think bad of us. So what exactly did Benjamin Franklin do?
Well in a moment I will read from his autobiography but first we have to know that
he had struggled with another member of parliament who always voted against him. So
whenever he had an idea which he was fighting for the other guy said no no this is crap we will do
something else. So it was a political opponent and Franklin was thinking about how he could
turn him around to make him his friend. So therefore he did the following and now I quote
having heard that he had in his library a certain very scarce and curious book I wrote a note to him
expressing my desire of perusing that book and requesting he would do me the favor of lending
it to me for a few days. He sent it immediately and I returned it in about a week with another note
expressing strongly my sense of the favor. When we next met in the house he spoke to me which he
had never done before and with great civility and he ever after manifested a readiness to serve me
on all occasions so that we became great friends and our friendship continued to his death. So by
asking his political opponent for a favor he turned him into his friend. As a psychologist
and as a scientist of course we would say well this is just an anecdote. It's just
a case study with only one participant so this is not really a solid science. But interestingly
of course there is some evidence that suggests that this would really work. Take for example a
look at a study by Yacker and Landy in which participants had the possibility to earn some
money for participating in an experiment. But after the experiment the experimenter said well
I'm running out of money would it be okay if you give me the money back? So the experimenter asked
to do him a favor just like Benjamin Franklin did and in one control condition they were not asked
for a favor. In another condition they were asked by another also to give the money back but this
time for the institution because the institution would be running out of money. Later on when asked
how much sympathy they would have for the experimenter it could be shown that those participants
who actually did him a favor and gave him the money back they much more often said that they
liked him more. So it really seems to work at least with small favors and one of the reasons
of course is cognitive dissonance. If we do somebody a favor we of course also ask ourselves
well why did I do him the favor? Why did I give him all the money back? So I mean I was just working
to get all the money now I'm giving it away. So there must be quite a good reason to do so
and in our mind we try to rationalize it by saying well probably it was because he was a nice guy.
And that's probably the same with Benjamin Franklin. Probably his political opponent just
thought well why did I give him the book? Well maybe he's not that bad as I thought and I guess
in this story by the way is also another factor which was that when the political opponent realized
that Franklin was also interested in the same book he probably thought well maybe he's much
more similar to me than I thought. And as we've seen in other studies as soon as we get the
impression that somebody is quite similar to us we also tend to like him much more. So in everyday
life these results tell us that whenever we feel afraid of asking somebody for a favor because we
think well maybe afterwards he will think bad of me. This doesn't seem to be the case at least for
small favors. Usually the other person likes us more afterwards. And this is especially interesting
I guess for all people who sometimes struggle with social anxiety, who struggle to make contact.
That's it for today. I hope you enjoyed this episode and if you want we'll see you next time.
