How Ben Franklin Can Help You Get a Raise
The next time you want to improve your relationship with someone, ask them to do you a favor. Why? Because asking for a favor and demonstrating kindness and gratitude towards someone impacts the way they perceive you. The misconception is that your beliefs always shape your actions, the truth is that your actions often shape your beliefs.
This surprising influence is known as the Benjamin Franklin effect, a reference to a specific incident in his autobiography when he recounts a method he used to turn a rival into a friend:
“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.”
Dale Carnegie included this strategy in famous book, How to Win Friends and Influence People explaining it as a subtle but effective form of flattery that shuffles the social dynamic by signaling that you consider them to have something you don't, whether more intelligence, more knowledge, or more skills. The key is to ask for something without offering reciprocity, giving the other person the opportunity to feel generous and special. Without an obvious outside reward for our actions (e.g. money or a favor in return), our brains will find an inner reward and reasoning.
The theory suggests that by asking someone to do you a favor you’re asking them to behave in a way that subconsciously forces them to shift the way that they perceive you and your relationship. Your brain wants consistency between actions and beliefs, so when your actions don’t align with your beliefs your brain adjusts your beliefs to eradicate erratic behavior. In simple terms, you do favors for people you like so therefore you must actually like that person.
Thinking about asking for a raise or promotion? Rather than doing a bunch of extra work and favors for your team, ask your boss for a favor. One study showed that employees who ask their bosses for advice, double their chances of getting promoted.
Consider favors your new social secret weapons.