The Aladdin factor is a concept that holds that many of our desires are not satisfied because we do not ask. We underestimate the likelihood of people saying “Yes? When we ask for a favor. “We underestimate the “Aladdin factor“, which says that what we ask will be granted.
Studies have shown that people are not convinced that others are willing to complete questionnaires, donate to a charity, or simply listen to what they have to say.
- Have you ever needed anything from a stranger?Have you ever needed to ask someone for information or some other kind of favor?You certainly doubted or expected the worst.
- But should you behave like that?.
New research shows that we underestimate ourselves and fear the worst when it comes to asking people for a favor. Vanessa Bohns recently presented a summary of her research on this subject and illustrated a more optimistic picture of our ability to influence what we usually have.
Let’s say you have to borrow someone’s cell phone, do you need a story to justify it?You’ve spent the whole bus journey listening to old podcast episodes from your favorite YouTuber. The battery is discharged and you need to call your friend and ask him to pick you up. Will the Aladdin factor work in your favor? According to this theory, all you have to do is ask.
Do you think you need to talk before someone lends you a mobile phone to make a call?
In one study, the researchers asked participants for something similar: first, they had to estimate the number of people to contact before three of them agreed to lend their phones. On average, participants said they should ask 10 people.
From there, participants came out and tried to convince three people to lend their phones, so they could see if they were right in their assumptions.
On average, they only had to ask six people to get three to lend their mobile phones, i. e. people have underestimated each other’s willingness to help them.
Well, people are more willing to lend us their mobile phones than expected, but how far does the goodness of others go?What if we asked people to do something ethically questionable?
In another study, Bohns and his colleagues considered something more serious: ruining a book in a library.
The task of the participants in this study was to get someone to write the word “Pickles” in a book in the library. Ridiculous, inexplicable? His strategy would be to tell him that someone was playing a joke, but that he needed the written word in a different letter than yours.
As with the mobile phone study, the researchers asked participants to try to predict how many people they should approach before finding three who would accept “prey. “The library book. On average, participants estimated that they should approach about 11 people before they could get three people to accept.
So they went out and tried to get people to write in the book. Do you want me to deprive you of this book?Is it a good book!?.
Contrary to their expectations, they had to ask, on average, five different people for three people to go after the book.
Well, we’ve seen that we generally underestimate the possibility of someone helping us. But why are our predictions so incorrect? Part of the problem is that we forget how awkward it can be to say “No, someone. “
If you’re asked to sign a petition to promote environmentalism, you may feel uncomfortable saying no or feel like you’re offending the other person by implicitly saying that you don’t agree with their values.
As Bohns says, “many people agree on things, even things they prefer not to do, just to avoid the considerable discomfort of saying no. “
However, although this is the case, we tend not to think about it, and we less realize how strange it is to tell someone, the more we make mistakes in our estimates.
This research shows that if you want your wishes to be fulfilled, do so, these are anecdotal examples, but in real life our goals are different and we will always find multiple negative answers along the way, expecting this is part of life.
Of course, sellers always expect others to say ‘no’, but in addition to these rejection cases, there will always be people who will have a hard time saying a resounding ‘no’ without letting the other explain what they need.
This ability to communicate allows us not only to explore what we are interested in, but also to implement our self-affirmation. In that sense, we have to make sure that the genie of the lamp?You don’t have to ask so many questions for our wishes to come true.