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The Rules of the Favor Economy
Asking for help can deepen a relationship if you do it right
The first time I had to install an air conditioner in my apartment, I spent the early weeks of summer stewing in sweaty anxiety. I hated the stress of hoisting an unwieldy hunk of metal into my third-floor window, directly above a well-trafficked sidewalk. But I also hated the idea of asking any of my friends for help. Surely they all had better things to do on an evening or weekend than schlep to my place to perform manual labor.
And what if they said no? I already felt needy for being unable to handle the job myself. I didn’t want to deal with the awkwardness of being rejected on top of it.
Unless you’re absolutely brimming with confidence, you can probably relate. “The idea of asking for even a small amount of help makes most of us horribly uncomfortable,” writes social psychologist Heidi Grant in Reinforcements: How to Get People to Help You. “Scientists have found that it can cause social pain that is every bit as real as physical pain.”
But this is a clear case of our dumb psyches leading us astray. “We think people will be offended, annoyed, and ultimately reject our requests,” says Vanessa Bohns, a professor of organizational behavior at Cornell University. “But people are more likely to say yes than we think, and everyone leaves the interaction feeling positive.”
Bohns knows from experience: As a graduate student at Columbia, she often had to canvass subway platforms for research volunteers, approaching strangers and asking them to fill out surveys. “I dreaded going down there,” she says, “but most people agreed and were super nice about it.”
That’s because asking someone for a favor, when you approach it from the right angle, isn’t actually off-putting. In fact, it can build intimacy, foster trust, and endear you to the person you’re asking. There’s even a term for this phenomenon: the Benjamin Franklin effect. Franklin famously won over one of his critics by asking to borrow a rare book from his collection. The man obliged, Franklin sent a thank-you note, and the two forged a lasting friendship.
Some psychologists believe this strategy works because it forces people to resolve or avoid cognitive dissonance…
