For those unfamiliar, this is the definition of the BFE:
>The Ben Franklin effect is a proposed psychological phenomenon: a person who has already performed a favor for another person is more likely to do another favor for the other than if they had received a favor from that person. An explanation for this is cognitive dissonance. People reason that they help others because they like them, even if they do not, because their minds struggle to maintain logical consistency between their actions and perceptions.
I noticed that the opposite often happens. People who hurt someone for no reason often tend to start despising that person. Now, there are a number of possible reasons for this but it feels as if the mechanisms behind it is pretty similar: I hurt this person therefore I must convince myself they deserved it.
Benjamin Franklin quoted, "He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged." A person who has already performed a favor for another person is more likely to do another favor for the other than if they had received a favor from that person. So ask the targeted person for a small favor at first, and then build upon it, rather than doing the a favor to the person first.
When Benjamin Franklin was running for his second term as a clerk in the Pennsylvania legislature one of his colleagues gave a big speech criticizing him.
Franklin still won that second term, but he knew he had to get this hater on side as soon as possible.
As a keen observer of human nature Franklin deployed an ingenious tactic, the excerpt below (taken from his autobiography) explains how it was done:
"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."
So what happened here?
This is an example of cognitive dissonance.
When our minds can't reconcile our behaviors with our beliefs, we change our belief to match the behavior.
After lending Franklin the book, he justified his actions for doing so, and started to like him as a result... you don't lend a book to someone you dislike!
This psychological phenomenon is affectionately known as the Ben Franklin effect.
The reverse is also true, you grow to hate the people you harm.
Which helps explain war-time atrocities, because during times of war we de-humanize enemies to justify killing them.
In 1969 Jecker and Lecker studied this phenomenon by giving students a chance to win money in an intellectual contest.
After the contest the study participants were broken up into three groups:
In group 1, the researcher asked them to return the money because he used his own funds and was running short.
In group 2, a secretary asked them to return money because it was from the psychology department and funds were low.
In group 3, they were not approached at all.
Then they were all surveyed to see how much they liked the researcher.
Group 1 rated him higher than Group 3, showing that a personal request for favor increased liking.
Group 2 rated the researcher lower than Group 1, showing that an impersonal request for favor decreased liking.
This ha
... keep reading on reddit ➡
Probably his age.
##Franklin's Letter
In 1757, an atheist wrote Ben Franklin asking for advice about a text he was about to publish, in which he argued that religion is unnecessary. Franklin's response is here, and it's basically "do yourself a favor and fucking burn this". And personally I think his advice makes just as much sense today as it did then. His arguments:
-
You'll never convince the vast majority of people that their religion is invalid. All you will do is antagonize them.
-
You are assuming that anyone that you do convince to reject their religious beliefs will be better off for it, but in fact the vast majority will be worse off.
And he explains the second thusly:
> "But think how great a Proportion of Mankind consists of weak and ignorant Men and Women, and of inexperienc’d and inconsiderate Youth of both Sexes, who have need of the Motives of Religion to restrain them from Vice, to support their Virtue, and retain them in the Practice of it till it becomes habitual, "
and
> "If Men are so wicked as we now see them with Religion what would they be if without it? "
In other words, he acknowledges that once you have developed good habits and good character, you may not need religion, but that the vast majority of people are going to need the guidance of religion to develop those traits. He also mentions that the author himself likely benefited from his own religious education.
And those are his two arguments, and his only two arguments. Franklin doesn't argue that God exists or that the author risks going to hell for denying Christ. In fact, he never makes a single argument to suggest that atheism is wrong. He only argues that religion is necessary for the vast majority of people to build the habits necessary for a virtuous life.
##Atheists today
So let's say that you're an atheist and humanist, and you have determined that you don't need religion to be a good person (with "good" defined in typical humanist terms), and you encounter people who are religious, and whose morality is derived from that. What should you do?
If you convince them of the validity of atheism but not humanism, them you have made that person worse off. They now have no moral restraint and no higher power to turn to in times of crisis.
On the other hand, if you convince them of the validity of humanism, but not
... keep reading on reddit ➡"For my own part I wish the bald eagle had not been chosen as the representative of our country. He is a bird of bad moral character. He does not get his living honestly. You may have seen him perched on some dead tree, where, too lazy to fish for himself, he watches the labour of the fishing hawk; and when that diligent bird has at length taken a fish, and is bearing it to his nest for the support of his mate and young ones, the bald eagle pursues him, and takes it from him. . . . the turkey is in comparison a much more respectable bird, and withal a true original native of America."
- Benjamin Franklin, 1784
He even called eating animals “unprovoked murder." https://www.vrg.org/history/benjamin_franklin.htm
The book that changed his mind was called "Wisdom's Dictates" by Thomas Tryon. It had this on its title page:
Seventyfive Noble dishes of Excellent Food, far exceeding those made of fish or flesh, which banquet I present to the sons of wisdom, on such as shall decline that depraved custom of eating flesh and blood.
The book also advocates what is ostensibly veganism, albeit with a religious context:
*"*Refrain at all times such foods as cannot be procured without violence and oppression*. For know, that all the inferior creatures when hurt do cry and fend forth their complaints to their maker...Be not insensible that every creature doth bear the image of the great creator according to the nature of each, and that he is the vital power in all things. Therefore, let none take pleasure to offer violence to that life, lest he awaken the fierce wrath, and bring danger to his own soul. But let mercy and compassion dwell plentifully in your hearts, that you may be comprehended in the friendly principle of God's love and holy light. Be a friend to everything that's good, and then everything will be a friend to thee, and cooperate for thy good and welfare."
Back when I was prepping for the CILS C1 exam I did a couple months using the Ben Franklin method to focus on improving my writing in Italian. I think the best part about using this method is that you do not really need a tutor or native speaker to help you with it. The method is, however, more helpful for more advanced learners.
I have come up with a modified version that I think is really going to help me focus on known problems that I have with Italian as well as find issues that I am not currently aware of all while I acquire structures and grammatical forms by reading, analyzing, and mimicking skilled writers.
Here is a YouTube video that explains the basic method. I have modified things a little bit.
- Read an article that you enjoy and whose topic and style you like and want to imitate.
- Copy the article by hand into a notebook.
- Extract the most interesting paragraphs from the article and read them aloud using Speechling to get feedback on pronunciation.
- The next day take notes on those paragraphs that give you an idea of what was said and how the paragraph was structured but doesn't contain exactly what was in the paragraph.
- No fewer than two days later, but not more than 4, write your version of the paragraph by hand. Do not attempt to edit or improve it while writing. You need to have time between steps four and five so that you are not able to just recreate it verbatim from memory. This also aids learning by taking advantage of the spacing effect.
- After having written the paragraph edit it with an eye for any errors in spelling, grammar, and punctuation and rewrite it, again by hand, to a final draft.
- Compare your version with the original. Discuss it with a tutor or native speaker if possible.
- Some time later rewrite the paragraph as a poem.
This is where I stop in the process. This is mostly because I am focusing mostly on paragraphs rather than complete articles. It is possible that in the future I may end up writing entire articles but I believe that my current needs are better served by getting more input (reading more articles from different sources) than pushing myself to write more.
I was asked to cross post this from /r/codependancy but it really applies to anyone who is more 'giving' in the relationship. Could be a co dependant type, a 'caretaker personality' or just a healthy person who gets caught up with a PD person and gets sucked into their control tactics. This article is kind of long, but explains it in detail:
http://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/10/05/the-benjamin-franklin-effect/
Basically the premise is that people assume that if you do nice things for someone, that they will like you for being nice. But this Ben Franklin effect says otherwise, and is part of 'cognitive dissonance', where a person feels conflict between what they think, and what is reality, and how people often twist their brain into knots trying to amke the two come together.
Apparently the theory is that when people are in a relationship with someone who is not really caring, but you are being very nice and generous with them, it can fire up this cognitive dissonance, which then makes your brain think "if i am nice and they are not nice to me, that means I am a fool for being nice and generous to them". This makes your brain say 'so they MUST relaly be a nice person". This calms the cognitive dissonance feeling/anxiety, whatever you want to call it. No one wants to feel like they wasted time on someone who is a jerk, so you try to find ways to convince yourself they really are a good person, to feel better about yourself. With Ben Franklin, he asked an enemy of his to borrow a very rare book, and after that the guy suddenly got very nice to him. The theory is that the guy had to reconcile not liking Franklin, vs loaning him something important to him. He wouldnt loan a jackass a very rare book, so obviously Franklin must be a decent man.
What really blew me away was when I read about this phenomenon and the article (not the one i linked to i think) said that it was likely an explanation why demanding, uncaring people often had people totally falling for them and chasing them. The demanding person would ask favors of the nicer person, be selfish, etc. This would make the nicer person do nice things for the selfish person and would trigger this idea of 'they must be worth it, otherwise why would I do all these nice things for them?' The selfish person though would typically NOT be doing nice things for the other person and so would not feel this effect.
It really would explain why giving, caring people often get hurt, and the selfish people end up not
... keep reading on reddit ➡
When Benjamin Franklin was running for his second term as a clerk in the Pennsylvania legislature one of his colleagues gave a big speech criticizing him.
Franklin still won that second term, but he knew he had to get this hater on side as soon as possible.
As a keen observer of human nature Franklin deployed an ingenious tactic, the excerpt below (taken from his autobiography) explains how it was done:
"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."
So what happened here?
This is an example of cognitive dissonance.
When our minds can't reconcile our behaviors with our beliefs, we change our belief to match the behavior.
After lending Franklin the book, he justified his actions for doing so, and started to like him as a result... you don't lend a book to someone you dislike!
This psychological phenomenon is affectionately known as the Ben Franklin effect.
The reverse is also true, you grow to hate the people you harm.
Which helps explain war-time atrocities, because during times of war we de-humanize enemies to justify killing them.
In 1969 Jecker and Lecker studied this phenomenon by giving students a chance to win money in an intellectual contest.
After the contest the study participants were broken up into three groups:
In group 1, the researcher asked them to return the money because he used his own funds and was running short.
In group 2, a secretary asked them to return money because it was from the psychology department and funds were low.
In group 3, they were not approached at all.
Then they were all surveyed to see how much they liked the researcher.
Group 1 rated him higher than Group 3, showing that a personal request for favor increased liking.
Group 2 rated the researcher lower than Group 1, showing that an impersonal request for favor decreased liking.
This ha
... keep reading on reddit ➡If you ask someone to do a favor for you, they end up liking you more?
Is it true that if I get someone to do a favor for me. It is much easier for him/her to do the second favor as well? Moreover, this could be used to have someone go from a small favor to a much larger favor?
