Ben Franklin Effect

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Pop quiz. You want get into someone’s good books—fast. 

What do you do?

  • a) Pay them a genuine compliment
  • b) Invite them over for a nice home-cooked meal
  • c) Boss them around and ask them to do stuff for you

The answer?

Boss them around, you delegator you. (I’m kidding, but only slightly…)

You see, there’s a phenomenon known as the Ben Franklin effect.

A decorative photo of USD money with Ben Franklin's face.

And this phenomenon explains why someone likes you more after doing you a favor. 

Strange, right?

Now, there’s a right and a wrong way to go about this. And you can use this phenomenon to improve the relationship you have with your audience.

Because when your audience has a favorable perception of you, they’ll be more likely to interact with your content, buy your products, and recommend you to their friends. All that good stuff.

But you have to use the Ben Franklin effect strategically. 

Otherwise, it could backfire.

TL;DR

In a rush? Here’s what we’re expanding on today:

  • The Ben Franklin effect explains why people like someone more after doing a favor for them.
  • You can use the Ben Franklin effect to create deeper connections with your audience.
  • Those deeper connections can result in more conversions and higher brand loyalty.

What is the Ben Franklin effect?

The Ben Franklin effect is when someone likes you more after they do a favor for you.

It’s a pretty interesting phenomenon.

Especially because we usually think that people will like us more if we do favors for them. 

And yah, doing nice things for people is a good thing. But isn’t it interesting to think about how the inverse also works, too?

So, how does the Ben Franklin effect work?

Imagine this:

You’re in the middle of making a cake. You realize you’re short an egg and you don’t want to go all the way to the store for one egg (actually you’d probably just buy a dozen at that point. Who buys a single egg? But still. You don’t want to go to the store for any eggs).

So, you text your neighbor and ask if they have an egg they can bring over.

A few minutes later, your doorbell rings, and you don’t need to hide and pretend you’re not home, because this time, you know who’s on the other side.

You answer the door, your neighbor hands you a single egg, and you can happily finish your cake.

To thank your kind neighbor, you bring over a few slices of fruit cake. (And now your neighbor probably thinks less of you because how dare you call that a cake…)

Ok, bar the fruit cake, what happened here? And why would this make the neighbor like you more?

Here’s the deal: When we do something nice for someone, our brains try to work out why we did it.

Logically, it doesn’t make sense to do something nice for someone we don’t like.

So, instead of trying to figure out why we did that nice thing, our reptilian brains come to the conclusion that we must just so happen to like the person. Because if we didn’t like them, we wouldn’t have agreed to helping them out. Right?

In other words, we shape our beliefs so they align with our actions.

But why does this happen?

I asked the same thing and did some more digging. 

And it’s partly due to cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance happens when people feel their actions don’t align with their beliefs. 

This unalignment causes discomfort.

And to eliminate that discomfort, people either change their actions or their beliefs. So, in the case of the Ben Franklin effect, people may adjust their beliefs (i.e., think more favorably of you) to align with their actions (i.e., doing a favor for you).

Note: The reason it’s called the Ben Franklin effect is because Ben Franklin (a founding father of the United States) once asked someone (who didn’t like him) if he could borrow a book. The other person lent him the book and afterwards, became considerably nicer to Mr. Franklin.

How to use this phenomenon to build stronger relationships with your audience

Ok, you have great power in your hands. Here’s how to use that power for good and get your audience to think of you as the cat’s meow:

  • Ask people to take a survey for you (bonus: you can learn more about your audience through a survey)
  • Ask people to leave you reviews for products they recently bought
  • Ask people to share your latest blog post (or share a social post, a podcast episode, etc.)
  • Ask for feedback or testimonials from clients you recently worked for

(These are all things you’re probably already doing—now you know how they can impact your business on a different level.)

The key? Don’t make your ask too big. If it’s too big, your audience is unlikely to follow through.

Finally, just like we brought over a piece of cake to our neighbor, you want to extend your thanks to your audience. 

You don’t need to do anything extravagant. Simple let them know how their favor helped you (“thank you so much for your feedback! Your feedback helps me continue to refine and improve my offers to help more people like you.”). 

Give a try!


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