Ben Franklin effect

The Ben Franklin effect is a proposed psychological phenomenon: A person who has performed a favor for someone is more likely to do another favor for that person than they would be if they had received a favor from that person. An explanation for this would be that we internalize the reason that we helped them was because we liked them. The opposite case is also believed to be true, namely that we come to hate a person whom we did wrong to. We de-humanize them to justify the bad things we did to them.

It has been suggested that if soldiers who have killed enemy servicemen in combat situations later come to hate them, it is because this psychological maneuver helps to “decrease the dissonance of killing.” Such a phenomenon might also “explain long-standing grudges like Hatfield vs. McCoy” or vendetta situations in various cultures: “Once we start, we may not be able to stop and engage in behavior we would normally never allow.” As one commentator has put it, “Jailers come to look down on inmates; camp guards come to dehumanize their captives; soldiers create derogatory terms for their enemies. It’s difficult to hurt someone you admire. It’s even more difficult to kill a fellow human being. Seeing the casualties you create as something less than you, something deserving of damage, makes it possible to continue seeing yourself as a good and honest person, to continue being sane."

The Benjamin Franklin effect, in other words, “is the result of your concept of self coming under attack. Every person develops a persona, and that persona persists because inconsistencies in your personal narrative get rewritten, redacted and misinterpreted."

Benjamin Franklin, whom the effect is named after, quoted what he described as an "old maxim" in his autobiography: "He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged."

In his autobiography, Franklin explains how he dealt with the animosity of a rival legislator when he 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.

Jecker and Landy (1969) held a study in which students were invited to take part in a Q&A competition run by the researcher in which they could win sums of money. After this competition was over, one-third of the students who had “won” were approached by the researcher, who asked them to return the money on the grounds that he had used his own funds to pay the winners and was running short; another third were asked by a secretary to return the money because it was from the psychology department and funds were low; another third were not approached. All three groups were then asked how much they liked the researcher. The second group liked him the least, the first group the most – suggesting that a refund request by an intermediary had decreased their liking, while a direct request had increased their liking.

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Wikipedia