How to make someone like you

We can all attest to the fact that we tend to like people who do us a favour. Whether it’s the soft spot we have for the barista who always gives us a free cookie with our morning coffee, or perhaps that friend who was the first to lend a helping hand when you were moving house. But did you know that the act of them doing you a favour … might in turn be causing them to like you more?This phenomenon has been referred to as the Ben Franklin effect. This refers to the idea that a person who has performed a favour for someone is more likely to perform another favour for that person than if they have received a favour from that person. In other words, we are more likely to do a favour for a person if we have done so in the past than if they have previously done us a favour.An experiment back in 1969 by Jecker and Landy suggested exactly this. In the experiment, participants were challenged to an intellectual contest with money being given as the prize. Once the prize money had been handed out winners then found themselves in one of three circumstances.Group 1 were asked to return the prize money by the researcher as he had been using his own money for the contest and was running short.Group 2 were asked by the secretary to return the prize money because it was from the department and the budget was running low.Group 3 were allowed to keep the prize money.The participants were then surveyed to see how much they liked the researcher. What was found was that despite giving the money back Group 1 rated the researcher more highly than Group 3 did. This suggests that personally asking for a favour increases ones likeability. So why is this? One widely accepted theory is that of cognitive dissonance. It doesn’t make sense to have helped someone if we don’t like them, therefore we reason that we’ve done someone a favour because we like them. If we don't, our minds cannot maintain a rational consistency between our thoughts and actions.So there you have it, instead of constantly going out of your way to do things for someone you like, ask them to do something for you!