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Trust | Ben Franklin Effect
THE THOUGHT
Strangers are just one favour away from meaning.
Thirty thousand feet up, somewhere between here and there, I watched her struggle with the tray table. A minor inconvenience that can make any flight feel endless.
I travel often enough to know the unspoken rules. Headphones in, attention elsewhere, armrests go to the middle passenger. Yet something about her silent struggle pulled me from my practiced detachment.
"Let me try," I offered, reaching across the narrow divide.
Eventually the tray released, but the conversation latched on. She told me about her daughter's wedding, the new city she would call home, the struggles of complicated family dynamics. I found myself leaning in, asking questions.
Hours later, the woman who had been a complete stranger now felt strangely familiar. Helping was the spark that reshaped our boundaries.
Have you noticed the moment fondness follows helpfulness?
No person was ever honored for what he received. Honor has been the reward for what he gave.
THE DIVE
When Helping Creates Caring
The Ben Franklin Effect describes a counterintuitive phenomenon: we develop stronger positive feelings toward people after doing them favours.
Benjamin Franklin discovered this accidentally in 1736 when he asked a political rival to lend him a rare book. The man complied, and their relationship transformed from hostility to respect.
What Franklin stumbled upon was a fundamental mechanism of human connection. Something shifts inside us when we extend help to a stranger. What feels like kindness may actually be rewiring how we see them entirely.
The driver is cognitive dissonance: the mental discomfort we feel when our actions contradict our beliefs. When we help someone we're neutral about, our brain asks: why did I invest effort in this person? Rather than accept it was random, we resolve the tension by deciding they must be worth helping.
Leon Festinger's landmark 1957 research revealed this happens automatically. Our minds work backward from behavior to belief, crafting narratives that make our actions feel rational. The favour becomes retroactive evidence of our affection.
Neuroimaging evidence suggests the effect intensifies with effort. Small helps create small attitude shifts. Meaningful sacrifices generate meaningful changes in how we perceive someone.
This effect challenges our assumption that relationships follow a linear path from liking to helping. Sometimes the helping comes first, and the liking follows.
What if the person asking for help holds the real power?
THE PRACTICE
The Reverse Franklin
If helping rewires how we see people, what happens when we flip the script?
Think of someone you feel mildly resistant toward. Perhaps a colleague you've been avoiding, a neighbour you barely acknowledge, or a family member you've grown distant from. Now consider doing something counterintuitive: ask them for help.
The request must be genuine and specific. Something meaningful but manageable: advice on their expertise, help with a concrete challenge. The key is acknowledging what they uniquely bring to the table, because generic asks don't create the same cognitive shift.
After they help you, notice how your perception changes. Small details about them that were invisible before might suddenly become interesting. Their quirks might now seem charming.
The effect works in reverse too. Consider doing an unsolicited small favour for someone you'd like to feel closer to. Help becomes the bridge to caring.
What if a small experiment changes everything between you?
NOTEWORTHY
Read: How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie — Explores how small requests can shift the balance between strangers into lasting connection.
Explore: You Are Not So Smart by David McRaney — Traces Franklin's original encounter and unpacks why asking for help can transform enemies into allies.
Watch: 3 Kinds of Bias by J. Marshall Shepherd — Reveals how confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance reshape what we think we know about ourselves.
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