How does investment play a role in human attachment? Full disclosure: By investment, I do not mean specifically just money. Investment can be attention, effort, value placed on a certain project, relationship, or even person.
Franklin effect
Benjamin Franklin had a really impressive yet simple idea to deal with people. He once asked his rival candidate if he had a book in his collection. Franklin insisted on lending him that book if the opponent had it in his collection. The opponent found this unusual surely and understandably. But yet he gave Franklin the book he asked for anyway. What did Franklin really want?
A relationship between two rivals is usually and understandably full of hostility. One or both should feel the need of performing contempt toward each other whenever they can. This was the ideal and classic scenario of the time where kings used to wage wars to demand kingdom and their territory. But in this civilized current society, the new normal is for both opposing parties to sit in the same room and negotiate their way into a peaceful conclusion.
But our primitive brain inherited from our ancestors had us hardwired to feel the need of performing ‘contempt’ and ‘confrontation’ toward each other whenever we can.
I like to think what Franklin did had a threefold purpose.
A) When you ask a person to do you a favor, you actually allow their subconscious mind to send them a message “I am already and anyway superior to him. Otherwise, what would he need my help for?” The textbook definition of contempt is when someone tries to prove that they are more powerful or superior to the other person. So he doesn’t feel the need to contempt out of his primitive and natural urge (now that you have pleased his ego by another medium.)
B) They think they have invested in you. So whatever you accomplish later doesn’t really feel as much a “slap in the face” as it would before. Because he thinks what you have managed to accomplish has somewhat been possible because he has helped you get there. Maybe it was some idea from the book he gave you that allowed you to perform better and thrive, or it could be anything. Subconsciously, he seeks credit for your accomplishment and doesn’t feel as much hostile toward you as before.
C) Avoidance of proper communication of feelings can breed an obsessive need to confront. By asking the other person for help, you get to explain your predicament to the other person. And as a result, he would feel empathy for you. I know. It’s hard to explain. It’s all in the subconscious which is far beyond the reach of your conscious. When subconscious kicks in, we would find ourselves doing things that our conscious would ideally not approve of.
It is a celebrated culture in the corporate world for one to ask for a visiting card from another competitor as a way of building rapport, that too as business rivals. It is also not uncommon for a lawyer to ask for a visiting card from the opposing lawyer.
The law of consistency
One day there was a woman standing and waiting for a bus in a bus stop. It was a crowd there. She was waiting, minding her own business. Suddenly she sees a guy walking toward the bus stop from a distance. Something was different about the man. He was smiling, looking at her. Although he was a total stranger, the woman couldn’t resist smiling back. Can we blame her? Smile is contagious, after all.
The man comes toward her, walking. And he greets the woman good morning. The woman greeted him back. Social rule, after all.
Then the man says to her, “You are a very nice lady! Actually, I needed a favor and of all the people in this crowd, I think you are the only person who can and will help me. I know that.”
The lady, all flattered, said with a smile, “Sure! what can I help you with?”
“I am a contestant for a contest. It is about a social experiment. There are cameras surrounding this bus stop. And I was told that if I can get five or so stranger women to kiss me, I will win a prize of 1,000 dollars!”
It was a weird request and the woman was understandably uncomfortable with the request. But she thought to herself, ” Oh what the hell! This is just a kiss. The man will leave if I just give him a kiss on the cheek.”
Thinking this, for whatever reason, the woman agreed to kiss him. And she did kiss him, on the cheek!
Then the man said with a content look and grin on his face, “Thank you so much. You are a really good kisser. Although, about the kiss, it was a prank. Haha. I actually did need a favor from you but I just wanted to see for fun if you would go for this one. Actually, I am a salesman for a water purifier company. I sell water filters. I just need to issue 30 names of people who would buy the filter in this form. Mam, I am asking you. Would you buy a filter from our company? We make the best filters!”
The lady felt uncomfortable, again. But then again, for whatever reason, she agreed to sign her name along with her address and phone number in the form.
What was her reason?
This is the law of consistency at work. We humans tend to stick to a course of action. The first action can be performed for any random motive or reason.But after that, we feel a natural urge to stick with whatever we did in the first place. The idea is, we do it to avoid conflict and inconsistency.Human mind hates conflict. It cannot take two different sets of ideas at the same time. We naturally want to stick to our decisions. The decision of sticking to the course is often not made with careful logic and thinking. We just trust our previous selves to have made a fair decision. If we didn’t trust our previous judgment, we would be having what psychologists call Cognitive Dissonance
People commit a certain set of actions and they stick to it.
It is the same explanation of why we tend to stay in bad relationships, bad investments, bad institutions, and any previously-made bad decisions. Period.
It is because we want to trust our very first judgment.
It is just considered to be a bias or strong influence in our decision-making. But there is no absolute when it comes to human mind. A human can deviate from any supposed thing he or she was known to do.
This is how previously made investments can create a bias in our mind that can cause us to place attachment toward any given thing or person.
Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.” His point was that only small-minded men refused to rethink their prior beliefs. Or, put another way, he thought that today’s intuition could trump yesterday’s conclusions.
Know Your Instincts 