Ben Franklin’s Wisdom

There’s one story from his life in particular that demonstrates his astute understand of human behavior. This story became so well-known it became known as The Benjamin Franklin Effect and was even cited in Carnegie’s book How to Win Friends and Influence People.

In his autobiography, Franklin explains how he changed a rival legislator into a friend when they served in the Pennsylvania legislature in the 18th century:

“Having heard that he had in his library a certain very scarce and curious book, I wrote a note to him, expressing my desire of perusing that book, and requesting he would do me the favour of lending it to me for a few days. He sent it immediately, and I return’d it in about a week with another note, expressing strongly my sense of the favour. When we next met in the House, he spoke to me (which he had never done before), and with great civility, and he ever after manifested a readiness to serve me on all occasions, so that we became great friends, and our friendship continued to his death.”

In a nutshell:

We think that we do nice things for the people we like and bad things to the people we hate. But the truth is that we grow to like people for whom we do nice things and dislike people we harm.

Dale Carnegie in his book interprets the request for a favor as “a subtle but effective form of flattery.”

So what does this mean for us?

If asking for a favor is a way of signalling that we consider someone to have something we don’t, then it’s a way of showing admiration and respect. People like to be admired and respected.

When we grant someone a favor, we start to like them better, perhaps because we enjoy the admiration and respect they have shown to us.

(I guess it’s another way that life’s “Law of Reciprocity” works!)

What do YOU think?

Is this just a sideways look at our relationships?

Is there a way that this could be misused?

Have you ever experienced Ben Franklin’s effect?

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