Benjamin Franklin Effect

Doing a favor for someone can actually make us feel more positively towards that person. The phenomenon is named after Benjamin Franklin, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America, who wrote about the concept in his autobiography..

#judgment

  1. Bem, D. J. (1967). Self-perception: An alternative interpretation of cognitive dissonance phenomena. Psychological Review, 74(3), 183.

  2. Cialdini, R. B. (2006). Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. Harper Business.

  3. Matthews, D. (2023, October 11). The Ben Franklin Effect: The Unexpected Power of Asking for a Favor. Resolve. https://www.resolve.blog/articles/the-ben-franklin-effect

  4. Jecker, J. & Landy, D. (1969). Liking a Person as a Function of Doing Him a Favor. Human Relations, 22(4), pp. 371–378. https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726769022004

  5. Franklin, K. (2018, March 26). Lay’s Increases Sales by Asking Customers to “Do Us a Flavor”. Digital Data Design Institute at Harvard. https://d3.harvard.edu/platform-digit/submission/lays-increases-sales-by-asking-customers-to-do-us-a-flavor/

  6. Blanchard, S.J., Carlson, K.A., & Hyodo J.D. (2016). The favor request effect: Requesting a favor from consumers to seal the deal. Journal of Consumer Research, 42(6), 985–1001. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucw005