Need a Favor? The Best Way to Ask

07-09-2008 - 20:00

If you need a friend to help you out, there's a really simple way to get what you want. Just ask. But make sure you ask directly. Don't beat around the bush, offering oblique hints. By making an outright request, you create a social obligation that is awkward to refuse. For many of us, the thought of asking someone for help or a favor--be it a colleague, friend or stranger--is fraught with discomfort. We figure we're imposing or tend to assume the person will say no, which could leave us embarrassed or humiliated. But new research from the Stanford Graduate School of Business verifies the old adage, "Ask and you shall receive." We tend to grossly underestimate how likely others are to agree to our requests for assistance. "Our research should encourage people to ask for help and not assume that others are disinclined to comply," says Frank Flynn, associate professor of organizational behavior at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. "People are more willing to help than you think and that can be important to know when you're trying to get the resources you need to get a job done, when you're trying to solicit funds or what have you."

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Study No. 1: Participants were instructed to ask favors of people in campus settings after estimating how many people they thought would comply with their requests. Participants asked to borrow strangers' cell phones in order to make calls back to the experimenter, solicited individuals to fill out questionnaires and asked students to help them find the campus gym--a favor that required obliging students to walk with a participant for at least two blocks in the direction of the gym.
The results: The researchers found that participants consistently overestimated by 50 percent the number of people they'd have to ask to get a certain number to agree with each request. "Participants were initially horrified at the prospect of going out and asking people for such things," says co-author Vanessa Lake, a Columbia University psychology doctoral student. "But they'd bound back into the lab afterward with big smiles, saying, 'I can't believe how nice people were!'"

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Study No. 2: Those results were replicated even more dramatically in a real-world scenario involving volunteers for Team in Training, a division of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. These volunteers, who receive training for endurance sports events in exchange for fundraising for the society, were asked to estimate the number of people they thought they would have to solicit to reach their fundraising goal, as well as the average donation they expected.
The results: Once again, volunteers predicted they would have to approach 50 percent more people than were actually needed. Moreover, they underestimated the average donation they'd receive by $17. "People seem to miscalculate how willing others are to say yes to direct requests, even in a conservative case like this where they're open to soliciting others and the request is significant--anywhere from $30 to more than $1,000," observes Flynn.

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Why do people consistently make such underestimations? The researchers found it's because they fail to get inside the head of the potential helper. The critical factor? Those who are approached for a favor are under social pressure to be benevolent, say Flynn and Lake. Just saying "no" can make them look very bad--to themselves or others. The study findings were published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

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