Behavioral psychologists have known about the Ben Franklin effect for a long time: by providing or asking for a favor, you can make those around you fall in love or feel sympathy for them. Here’s how you can use this tool when interacting with an employee who is obnoxious.
If The Descendants has anything to teach us, it’s that sometimes you have to break bread with your enemies. We are forced to meet with people who have received a position that we ourselves have dreamed of for so long. We must sometimes make deals with those who dream of destroying us. We have to bear the costs of the wedding of our beloved daughter, who has chosen our political rival as her companion. This is where the Ben Franklin effect comes in handy.
In 1737, Benjamin Franklin was reappointed Secretary of the Pennsylvania Assembly. “When I spoke out against one proposal, a new member of the assembly burst into a tirade against me in order to win the favor of another candidate,” the politician recalled in his memoirs. – This newcomer had education, and fortune, and talents – all together this should eventually make him an influential person; that’s what happened.”
What did Franklin do? He wrote to the opponent. Not a hint of disrespect, no. The politician simply asked if he could borrow a rare book from his collection. He sent the book, and a week later Benjamin Franklin returned it with a thank you note. “When we next met at a meeting,” Franklin wrote, “he himself spoke to me (which had never happened before), and quite politely at that. Moreover: he expressed his readiness to always be at my service, so we very soon became friends and continued to communicate until his death.
There is another side to the Ben Franklin effect: by doing a favor for someone we don’t like, we can trick our own brain into liking that person.
To understand why this happens, consider cognitive dissonance: when something happens to us that contradicts our idea of ourselves or the world, the brain has to urgently re-correlate our ideas with reality.
When you offer to bring coffee to a colleague who always passes off your ideas as his own, your brain is forced to adjust your attitude towards this employee so that it does not diverge too much from your actions. As a result, the negative attitude towards him gradually fades away. (On the other hand, think about it: maybe a colleague who constantly treats the entire department to homemade cakes is just trying to overcome his hatred of all of you?)
The effect also works at a simpler level. When two people cannot stand each other, and one suddenly holds out an olive branch, thereby he breaks the circle of hostility. The tension subsides.
Professor Bob Sutton advises offering or asking for a service not directly related to work
Most likely, born suckers intuitively follow this rule. Blogger Lauren Larson recalls this story: “I had a boss who loved to give advice to those who are going on vacation: where to go, where to stay, what to see and try. By sending him a letter with an urgent business question, you could wait weeks for an answer. It was worth asking for advice about the upcoming vacation – and within half an hour you received a detailed answer with detailed recommendations. And, of course, subordinates now and then turned to him for advice: he was clearly flattered.” As flattered and the opponent of Ben Franklin, the request to borrow a rare book.
The underside of the Ben Franklin effect is a bit more complicated. The idea that we can force ourselves to change our attitude towards someone we strongly dislike is tempting in theory, but the transition to practice raises a lot of questions and all sorts of “buts”. “Let’s say my enemy is a man,” says Lauren Larson. “If I decide to do him a favor to change my own attitude towards him, won’t that reinforce toxic gender roles for each of us?” For example, if I offer to bring coffee, and he agrees, and even comments in some caustic way, will I begin to consider him an even bigger jerk?
Organizational psychologist and Stanford professor Bob Sutton is sure that Ben Franklin’s strategy worked because it was he and his opponent who were on an equal footing from the very beginning: “If you occupy different levels of the hierarchical ladder, everything becomes a little more complicated: there is a risk of sliding into subservience or patronage.”
To avoid this, Sutton advises offering or asking for a service that is not directly related to work. And it is also desirable that the one who will provide the service, it gives pleasure. That’s exactly what Lauren Larson’s colleagues did when they asked their boss for advice on where to go on vacation.
In addition, it is important that the service is not too complicated (Ben Franklin did not ask the opponent to help him move the sofa, and sending the book was clearly not difficult for the latter). And this is where social media can help. “If I perceive another blogger as a competitor, I can write a laudatory tweet about his work,” says Lauren Larson. “This one step may not change my attitude towards him, but after taking a series of such steps, in the end I can stop feeling annoyed at him.”
Of course, there are people for whom no Ben Franklin effect works: if we do them a favor on our own initiative, we risk receiving in return such fierce ingratitude that we will hate them even more.
“This is especially true for daffodils,” agrees Professor Sutton. “They are used to taking everything that others do for them for granted, as a recognition of how good they are.” The same applies to colleagues who are accustomed to weaving intrigues. We can only avoid such people as far as possible.