Want someone to like you? Ask them for a favor

Common sense says the way to win someone over is to do nice things for them. But there's a stranger, better-documented route: get them to do a small favor for you. This is the Ben Franklin effect, named after a story Franklin told of disarming a political rival by asking to borrow a rare book. The man lent it, and soon became a lifelong friend.

The psychology runs on cognitive dissonance — our discomfort when actions and feelings don't match. When you do a favor for someone you don't particularly like, your brain notices the mismatch and quietly resolves it by adjusting the feeling: I helped that person, so I must actually like them. The action rewrites the attitude, not the other way around.

The flip side also holds: we tend to devalue people we've harmed, because it's easier to decide they deserved it than to feel like a bad person. The lesson is counterintuitive but practical — a genuine, modest request ("could you take a quick look at this?") can build more warmth than another polished gesture of generosity.