"The Ben Franklin Effect, as psychologists call it, works because we hate cognitive dissonance: we can’t stand a mismatch between our actions and thoughts. **So if we find ourselves helping someone out, we’ll unconsciously adjust our feelings for them**. After all, we don’t want to feel we’re valuing someone who doesn’t deserve it. In one key study, students won money in a contest; afterwards, some were asked to return it because, they were told, it was the hard-up researcher’s own cash. In a subsequent survey, that group liked the researcher significantly more than those who weren’t asked to give any money back." --- **Tags** -- [[quotes]], [[ben-franklin-effect]], [[reciprocity]], [[cognitive-dissonance]], [[relationships]], **Source** -- [[20241114100017 - B - Help!]]