Bringing Franklin Back

The wise words of Benjamin Franklin:
"He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged."

The Franklin Effect: (in my own words) A psychological finding done through a series of experiments that are hard to gather any evidence from that is based off of an incident Benjamin Franklin had in the 18th century about how getting others to do a favor for you initially sets you up for likability and future favors from the same person.

Not to sound grim on this subject matter, because like most things, I have trouble grasping an absolute opinion about the subject. As I am reading "59 Seconds" by Richard Wiseman, which I have had trouble putting it down, I am torn by what I think about the Franklin Effect and how it is suppose to make me and everyone else a more likable and more happy person.

So here's the supposed story: Mr. Franklin was having some difficulty getting an apathetic member of the Pennsylvania state legislature to like him. Of course, he rarely had this happen because of his amiable personality, so he put on his thinking cap and was going to get this person to like him. Then the idea came! Good Wise Ben thought of a book that he knew this certain person had tucked away on his bookshelf. He would ask this fellow politician to borrow this book, in hopes that this tiny favor would boost his number on the likability scale. And who would have guessed that the next time they met at the House, this certain gentleman was civil towards him and was ready to serve him.

Nice story, right? But how do we really know why Mr. Apathetic behaved in this manner? Maybe he had a change of heart about Mr. Franklin because of something he read or maybe he was having a terrific day and wanted to share his bliss. With this scenario, there are endless what-ifs and not enough concrete evidence.

My theory of why Mr. Apathetic had a role reversal was because he didn't know anything about Mr. Franklin besides what everyone else knew, and once he found that him and Benny had a commonality (the book) he gave him a chance. This theory is NOT the Franklin Effect, but I think it suits the incident much better than the fact that because Mr. Apathetic was tricked into doing Franklin a favor, he will continue to do more.

Now I am not a complete cynic of this theory though. I do think that naturally people are drawn to helping other people, and often times don't know their motivations behind random acts of kindness towards others. This is the way that it should be. We should be intrinsically motivated to help others, so that we feel better about ourselves and then others feel better about us. It's a win win situation. Or is it?

When our end goal is for people to like us more, I don't think manipulation is the best way to accomplish this. And, I don't think this is what the Franklin Effect is about, though. It might be slightly flawed, but the initial point is that once someone has that warm fuzzy feeling about helping you out, they are more likely to do it again. Versus if you were to just to do a favor for them and then they feel obligated to reciprocate. That's not a win win either.

So regardless if I may seem slightly cynical of the Benjamin Franklin Effect, I really think the theory makes us look at intentions, motivation, and manipulation. All three things very important when trying to influence people. All three mandatory and detrimental to the end process.