post 5

 

The Benjamin Franklin Effect 

I saw this article when I was searching for psychology topics. On tik tok, there's a specific genre of videos where it's a reddit video being narrated by a robot voice. I'm pretty sure I have a addiction to those videos, but I've noticed a common theme when people are asked the question "What is a cool psychology fact you know?". People always give facts on how to get people to like you more, which is how I actually found out about the Benjamin Franklin Effect. 

The Benjamin Franklin Effect is a cognitive bias in which you can increase your favorability with a person by just simply asking them to do you a small favor. For example, "hey, hand me that eraser?" or "can you show me how you did that homework assignment last night?". The person who does you the favor starts to like you more because of something called cognitive dissonance. They are doing a favor, so that must mean they like you right? If they are neutral about you, there will be a conflict between their actions (helping you out) and their beliefs (don't really particularly like you). In order to reduce the dissonance, they will start to convince themselves that they do like you. 

It has to be small favors though, so don't go asking for huge things LMAO. But still, this effect was really cool to me, and I'm almost kind of skeptical. How can it be that easy??

picture of my friends bcuz i lowkey think that's how i got them to start liking me