Benjamin Franklin effect: The simplest way to choose our leaders (I)

Another question: who is more likely to return the favour or give again?  The receiver? Wrong again. It happens that the person who gives will love the one he gives more; also, he’s more likely to give that person again.  The opposite is also true.  He, who takes or injures or cheats or bullies another person, […]

Another question: who is more likely to return the favour or give again?  The receiver? Wrong again.
 It happens that the person who gives will love the one he gives more; also, he’s more likely to give that person again.  The opposite is also true.  He, who takes or injures or cheats or bullies another person, is more likely to do it over and over again; not only that, he’s more likely to dislike the victim than the victim is likely to hate the tormentor. It’s called Ben Franklin Effect.
What makes psychology interesting is that unlike law or economics, it’s more than horse sense.  Sometimes it’s even counter common sense.  Have psychologists done any research to confirm Franklin Effect? They have. They’ve even mapped it on to a theory called cognitive dissonance.  But before we get into that, or discuss how we can use this heavily experimented phenomenon to objectively choose our leaders, let’s see what Ben Franklin, the polymath and bibliophile actually said.
In his book, Franklin 1868/1900, he said: “He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another than he whom you yourself has obliged.”
This insight was a result of a personal experience.  Franklin was annoyed by a political opponent in the Pennsylvania state legislature. He thus set out to win him over; this is described on pages 216-217 of the aforementioned book:
“I did not … aim at gaining his favour by paying any servile respect to him but, after some time, took this other method. 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 returned 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. This is another instance of the truth of an old maxim I had learned, which says, “He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another than he whom you yourself has obliged.”
In sum, if you can get a foe to do you a favour, he will be even more willing to do you more favours.
Now let’s go to the laboratory where psychologists have tested this phenomenon.
In 1969, Jecker and Landy involved students in an intellectual contest where they could win significant money.  Thereafter, they divided the participants who had won money into three groups. The researcher personally asked group A to return some of the money because he had used his own money for the contest. Group B was asked to return some of their money not  to the researcher but to an institution – the university.  Group C wasn’t asked to return any money.
Afterwards, all the three groups were asked to rate their likeness of the researcher.  Group A (which did the researcher a personal favour by returning some of the money they won) rated the researcher higher than the other two groups; that is, group A liked the researcher more than B and C liked him.
This counter intuitive phenomenon can be explained by cognitive dissonance theory.  It simply states: one, contradictions are uncomfortable; two, because they’re uncomfortable, contradictions motivate change.
Not clear?
As humans, we always try to justify our actions. If we do something good for a person, it means that we like that person.  In the event that we did something nice for an enemy, as in the case of Benjamin Franklin, we always try to resolve the conflict between the receiver of the gift being an enemy and our act of giving the gift.  So we resolve that the receiver is actually not an enemy but someone we like and value. The general idea is that people will consciously or unconsciously justify their actions. This is because we like to believe that we have control over all of our own actions (despite significant evidence that suggests this isn’t necessarily true).
The opposite is also true: If you were mean to someone, he must have deserved it.  If a politician steals from the people, he will justify his action by believing consciously or otherwise that they deserve to be stolen from.
The psychologist, David Straker said in Changing Minds “[A]nd we come to hate our victims, which helps to explain wartime atrocities. We de-humanize the enemy, which decrease the dissonance of killing and other things in which we would never normally indulge.”
Now let’s view this from a religious angle.  Prophet Muhammad (SAW) told his followers to give gifts because it “increases love.”  But from what you’ve read thus far, you understand that it is only the love of the giver that will increase and not the other way around.
Actually, Prophet Muhammad didn’t only encourage the giver to give but he also advised the receiver.  He said: when we receive a gift, we should return it with something more valuable, if we can’t do that, we should reciprocate with something of equal value and so on until he said if we can’t afford anything, we should pray for the giver.  This way, the love is no longer a one way traffic because everybody gets to be a giver.
Actually, in one of his sayings, Prophet Muhammad (SAW)  used the word ‘exchange’ gifts.  In the book Al-Adabul mufrad or Book of Morals a sound hadith reported Muhammad saying: “Exchange gifts, as that will let you attain love of one another” (Bukhari no: 594).
Aisha, his wife, narrated “Allah’s Apostles used to accept gifts and used to give something in return.” (Bukhari Volume 3, Book 47, Number 758.)
He also said “Whoever does you a favour, respond in kind, and if you cannot find the means of doing so, then keep praying for him until you think that you have responded in kind” (Book of Sunnan By Abu Daawood).
Here, prayer is also counted as a gift. We shall get to the psychology and science behind prayer in a second.