Discover the Ben Franklin Effect (And More)

Ben Franklin Effect: People like those they've helped more than they those who've helped them. In an experiment, participants liked the researcher more when he asked for the participation fee back as a favor. People like being owed favors - they have the perceived upper hand.

Acquiescence Effect: People answer questions rationally and emotionally. The answer is based not just on facts and logic, but on the human need to have a pleasant conversation. Intuitively people state not the absolute truth, but the least friction causing position.

Yerkes–Dodson law: The relationship between stress and performance, when plotted on a graph, shows as a bell curve. Too little stress kills peak performance due to low arousal, too much stress kills it due to anxiety. Moderate stress sets the stage for great work.

Propinquity Effect: Continued physical exposure to a person makes a friendship likely as you have multiple opportunities to discover similarities. This is why friendships and relationships develop at workplaces and college campuses.

Stimulus-Value-Role Model: This model describes the development of a relationship. How stimulating we find the person determines whether we move on to stage 2, where we examine if our values match. If they do, then we figure out mutually agreeable roles.

Motivation crowding theory: When intrinsically motivated people are offered some extrinsic motivation(like money) to complete a task, their intrinsic motivation is crowded out. Students paid to solve a puzzle in an experiment paradoxically did worse than the unpaid students.

Hungry judge effect: The hungrier a judge gets, the harsher his judgment. In the morning judges are much likelier to give parole than just before lunch. Unmet physical needs seem to corrode one's patience and sympathy. Kind, virtuous behavior - the luxury of a well fed human?

Low arousal theory: Criminals, artists, and people with attention disorders all find it hard to get aroused. Breaking the law, creating art, and hyperactively jumping from one task to another are different means to experience high arousal. Low arousal people are novelty chasers.

Fredkin's paradox: The smaller the consequences of a choice, the greater the time spent on it. When two equally attractive alternatives with hardly any difference are presented to people - when the choice barely matters - they paradoxically find it harder to choose.

Region-beta paradox: Humans recover from a shocking tragedy faster than from a moderate inconvenience. Big negative emotions set off psychological defense mechanisms that remain inactive when the distress is not intense enough. Mild negativity lingers due to this.