How to earn more gratitude from favours

Favours are the small graphite balls of care for others that keep the wheels of society turning. Yet researchers wanted to examine whether the way in which you do a favour impacts how people respond to it.

People do not feel obliged to say thank you in return for a favour but a small favour can induce reciprocal acts, especially when more effort is made by the person doing the favour.

To test this researchers has their assistants hold the door open for strangers and they observed how many people said thank you in response. The variable in the study was that sometimes the people holding the door open made more effort by smiling and making eye contact with the strangers they were helping. Of the people in the study only around 20 per cent said “thank you“ to the person who opened the door but they were much more likely to say thanks when a lot of effort had been made by the door-holder.

In a second study the assistants again held the door open for strangers but this time they also carried a file box with pens on the top that they dropped after helping the stranger through the door. Again the assistants either made effort to smile and make eye contact or did not. The aim was to see whether the effort made in doing the favour would make the strangers more likely to help when they dropped the pens.

The results in the second study showed that 84 per cent of the people who said thank you said it to assistants who had made a more significant effort. Additionally, 64 per cent of subjects helped high-effort assistants pick up their pens while only 19 per cent helped when an effort was not made.

Based on this the researchers say that people do not feel obliged to say thank you in return for a favour but a small favour can induce reciprocal acts, especially when more effort is made by the person doing the favour.

Next time you do hold that door open you might as well smile while you do it.