Research
A study of the effect was done by Jecker and Landy in 1969, in which students were invited to take part in a Q&A competition run by the researcher in which they could win sums of money. After this competition was over, one-third of the students who had "won" were approached by the researcher, who asked them to return the money on the grounds that he had used his own funds to pay the winners and was running short of money now; another third were asked by a secretary to return the money because it was from the psychology department and funds were low; another third were not at all approached. All three groups were then asked how much they liked the researcher. The second group liked him the least, the first group the most –suggesting that a refund request by an intermediary had decreased their liking, while a direct request had increased their liking. [3] [4]
In 1971, University of North Carolina psychologists John Schopler and John Compere carried out the following experiment:
They had their subjects administer learning tests to accomplices pretending to be other students. The subjects were told the learners would watch as the teachers used sticks to tap out long patterns on a series of wooden cubes. The learners would then be asked to repeat the patterns. Each teacher was to try out two different methods on two different people, one at a time. In one run, the teachers would offer encouragement when the learner got the patterns correct. In the other run of the experiment, the teacher insulted and criticized the learner when they erred. Afterward, the teachers filled out a debriefing questionnaire that included questions about how attractive (as a human being, not romantically) and likable the learners were. Across the board, the subjects who received the insults were rated as less attractive than the ones who got encouragement.
The subjects' own conduct toward the accomplices shaped their perception of them –"You tend to like the people to whom you are kind and dislike the people to whom you are rude." [1]
Results were reproduced in a more recent but smaller study by psychologist Yu Niiya with Japanese and American subjects. [5]
Uses
In the sales field, the Ben Franklin effect can be used to build rapport with a client. [9] Instead of offering to help the potential client, a salesperson can instead ask the potential client for assistance: "For example, ask them to share with you what product benefits they find most compelling, where they think the market is headed, or what products may be of interest several years from now. This pure favor, left unrepaid, can build likability that will enhance your ability to earn that client's time and investment in the future." [10]
The Benjamin Franklin effect can also be observed in successful mentor-protege relationships. Such relationships, one source points out, "are defined by their fundamental imbalance of knowledge and influence. Attempting to proactively reciprocate favors with a mentor can backfire, as the role reversal and unsolicited assistance may put your mentor in an unexpected, awkward situation". [10] The Ben Franklin effect was cited in Dale Carnegie's bestselling book How to Win Friends and Influence People . Carnegie interprets the request for a favor as "a subtle but effective form of flattery".
As Carnegie suggests:
...when we ask a colleague to do us a favour, we are signalling that we consider them to have something we don't, whether more intelligence, more knowledge, more skills, or whatever. This is another way of showing admiration and respect, something the other person may not have noticed from us before. This immediately raises their opinion of us and makes them more willing to help us again both because they enjoy the admiration and have genuinely started to like us. [11]
Psychologist Yu Niiya suggests that the Ben Franklin effect vindicates Takeo Doi's theory of amae (甘え), as described in The Anatomy of Dependence . It states that dependent, childlike behavior can induce a parent-child bond where one partner sees themselves as the caretaker. [5] In effect, amae creates a relationship where one person feels responsible for the other, who is then free to act immaturely and make demands.
One commentator has discussed the Ben Franklin effect in connection with dog training, thinking "more about the human side of the relationship rather than about the dogs themselves." While trainers often distinguish between the impact of positive and negative reinforcement-based training methods on the dogs, it can also be relevant to "consider the effects that these two approaches may have upon the trainer. The Ben Franklin Effect suggests that how we treat our dogs during training influences how we think about them as individuals – specifically, how much we like (or dislike) them. When we do nice things for our dogs in the form of treats, praise, petting and play to reinforce desired behaviors, such treatment may result in our liking them more. And, if we use harsh words, collar jerks or hitting in an attempt to change our dog's behavior, then...we will start to like our dog less." [12]
Persuasion or persuasion arts is an umbrella term for influence. Persuasion can influence a person's beliefs, attitudes, intentions, motivations, or behaviours.
Social psychology is the scientific study of how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others. Social psychologists typically explain human behavior as a result of the relationship between mental states and social situations, studying the social conditions under which thoughts, feelings, and behaviors occur, and how these variables influence social interactions.
Leon Festinger was an American social psychologist who originated the theory of cognitive dissonance and social comparison theory. The rejection of the previously dominant behaviorist view of social psychology by demonstrating the inadequacy of stimulus-response conditioning accounts of human behavior is largely attributed to his theories and research. Festinger is also credited with advancing the use of laboratory experimentation in social psychology, although he simultaneously stressed the importance of studying real-life situations, a principle he practiced when personally infiltrating a doomsday cult. He is also known in social network theory for the proximity effect.
In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance is described as the mental disturbance people feel when they realize their cognitions and actions are inconsistent or contradictory. This may ultimately result in some change in their cognitions or actions to cause greater alignment between them so as to reduce this dissonance. Relevant items of information include peoples' actions, feelings, ideas, beliefs, values, and things in the environment. Cognitive dissonance is typically experienced as psychological stress when persons participate in an action that goes against one or more of those things. According to this theory, when an action or idea is psychologically inconsistent with the other, people do all in their power to change either so that they become consistent. The discomfort is triggered by the person's belief clashing with new information perceived, wherein the individual tries to find a way to resolve the contradiction to reduce their discomfort.
Self-perception theory (SPT) is an account of attitude formation developed by psychologist Daryl Bem. It asserts that people develop their attitudes by observing their own behavior and concluding what attitudes must have caused it. The theory is counterintuitive in nature, as the conventional wisdom is that attitudes determine behaviors. Furthermore, the theory suggests that people induce attitudes without accessing internal cognition and mood states. The person interprets their own overt behaviors rationally in the same way they attempt to explain others' behaviors.
Elliot Aronson is an American psychologist who has carried out experiments on the theory of cognitive dissonance and invented the Jigsaw Classroom, a cooperative teaching technique that facilitates learning while reducing interethnic hostility and prejudice. In his 1972 social psychology textbook, The Social Animal, he stated Aronson's First Law: "People who do crazy things are not necessarily crazy", thus asserting the importance of situational factors in bizarre behavior. He is the only person in the 120-year history of the American Psychological Association to have won all three of its major awards: for writing, for teaching, and for research. In 2007, he received the William James Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Association for Psychological Science, in which he was cited as the scientist who "fundamentally changed the way we look at everyday life". A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Aronson as the 78th most cited psychologist of the 20th century. He officially retired in 1994 but continues to teach and write.
In social psychology, reciprocity is a social norm of responding to a positive action with another positive action, rewarding kind actions. As a social construct, reciprocity means that in response to friendly actions, people are frequently much nicer and much more cooperative than predicted by the self-interest model; conversely, in response to hostile actions they are frequently much more nasty and even brutal. It has also been called reciprocity bias.
The norm of reciprocity requires that people repay in kind what others have done for them. It can be understood as the expectation that people will respond to each other by returning benefits for benefits, and with either indifference or hostility to harms. The social norm of reciprocity may take different forms in different areas of social life, or in different societies. This is distinct from related ideas such as gratitude, the Golden Rule, or mutual goodwill. See reciprocity for an analysis of the concepts involved.
Attitudes are associated beliefs and behaviors towards some object. They are not stable, and because of the communication and behavior of other people, are subject to change by social influences, as well as by the individual's motivation to maintain cognitive consistency when cognitive dissonance occurs—when two attitudes or attitude and behavior conflict. Attitudes and attitude objects are functions of affective and cognitive components. It has been suggested that the inter-structural composition of an associative network can be altered by the activation of a single node. Thus, by activating an affective or emotional node, attitude change may be possible, though affective and cognitive components tend to be intertwined.
Foot-in-the-door (FITD) technique is a compliance tactic that aims at getting a person to agree to a large request by having them agree to a modest request first.
Under the controversy of person–situation debate, situationism is the theory that changes in human behavior are factors of the situation rather than the traits a person possesses. Behavior is believed to be influenced by external, situational factors rather than internal traits or motivations. Situationism therefore challenges the positions of trait theorists, such as Hans Eysenck or Raymond B. Cattell. This is an ongoing debate that has truth to both sides; psychologists are able to prove each of the view points through human experimentation.
Attribution is a term used in psychology which deals with how individuals perceive the causes of everyday experience, as being either external or internal. Models to explain this process are called Attribution theory. Psychological research into attribution began with the work of Fritz Heider in the early 20th century, and the theory was further advanced by Harold Kelley and Bernard Weiner. Heider first introduced the concept of perceived 'locus of causality' to define the perception of one's environment. For instance, an experience may be perceived as being caused by factors outside the person's control (external) or it may be perceived as the person's own doing (internal). These initial perceptions are called attributions. Psychologists use these attributions to better understand an individual's motivation and competence. The theory is of particular interest to employers who use it to increase worker motivation, goal orientation, and productivity.
Selective exposure is a theory within the practice of psychology, often used in media and communication research, that historically refers to individuals' tendency to favor information which reinforces their pre-existing views while avoiding contradictory information. Selective exposure has also been known and defined as "congeniality bias" or "confirmation bias" in various texts throughout the years.
Ingratiating is a psychological technique in which an individual attempts to influence another person by becoming more likeable to their target. This term was coined by social psychologist Edward E. Jones, who further defined ingratiating as "a class of strategic behaviors illicitly designed to influence a particular other person concerning the attractiveness of one's personal qualities." Ingratiation research has identified some specific tactics of employing ingratiation:
Compliance gaining is a term used in the social sciences that encompasses the intentional act of altering another's behavior. Research in this area originated in the field of social psychology, but communication scholars have also provided ample research in compliance gaining. While persuasion focuses on attitudes and beliefs, compliance gaining focuses on behavior.
Hypocrisy is the practice of feigning to be what one is not or to believe what one does not. The word "hypocrisy" entered the English language c. 1200 with the meaning "the sin of pretending to virtue or goodness". Today, "hypocrisy" often refers to advocating behaviors that one does not practice. However, the term can also refer to other forms of pretense, such as engaging in pious or moral behaviors out of a desire for praise rather than out of genuinely pious or moral motivations.
Self-justification describes how, when a person encounters cognitive dissonance, or a situation in which a person's behavior is inconsistent with their beliefs (hypocrisy), that person tends to justify the behavior and deny any negative feedback associated with the behavior.
Effort justification is an idea and paradigm in social psychology stemming from Leon Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance. Effort justification is a person's tendency to attribute the value of an outcome they put effort into achieving as greater than the objective value of the outcome.
In social psychology, the boomerang effect, also known as "reactance", refers to the unintended consequences of an attempt to persuade resulting in the adoption of an opposing position instead. It is sometimes also referred to as "the theory of psychological reactance", stating that attempts to restrict a person's freedom often produce an "anticonformity boomerang effect". In other words, the boomerang effect is a situation where people tend to pick the opposite of what something or someone is saying or doing because of how it is presented to them. Typically, the more aggressively a position is presented to someone, the more likely they are to adopt an opposing view.
The IKEA effect is a cognitive bias in which consumers place a disproportionately high value on products they partially created. The name refers to Swedish manufacturer and furniture retailer IKEA, which sells many items of furniture that require assembly.
