Earlier this week, I sent 60 students from my influence and persuasion class out into the city with a peculiar assignment.
Instead of reciting theory from dusty tomes until we eventually arrive at the real thing, their task was to roam the campus grounds and obtain a list of random objects and experiences within 90 minutes under a set of deliberately restrictive rules. Every item had to come from a stranger, and the only acceptable method of acquiring it was to ask.
The list included things like a secret written on a napkin, small trinkets from shops, a short recording of advice for the class, and various low-value items that most people would normally never think to request from someone they had never met.
When the students returned to the classroom, the podium desk looked like the aftermath of an unusually chaotic scavenger hunt. Among the pile of handwritten notes, sweets, and assorted objects sat a paper bag containing pregnancy tests that someone at a pharmacy had handed over after hearing the story of the assignment.
What surprised the students most was not the odd assortment of things they managed to collect, but the success rate they found.
You see, nearly every group had completed almost the entire list. The prevailing expectation before they left the classroom had been that strangers would mostly decline. Instead, they found that people were frequently amused by the request and often quite happy to help.
What exactly was going on, we asked as the debrief began.
Sometimes getting more is as simple as asking for it
Psychologists have been examining this pattern for decades, and the results consistently point toward what is an uncomfortable realization for many of us.
The barrier that keeps people from getting more out of life and those around us is often not a refusal from others, but our own decision to never ask.
One of the most widely cited demonstrations of how small features of a request influence behavior comes from psychologist Ellen Langer's famous copier study in the late 1970s (Langer, Blank, and Chanowitz, 1978). In the experiment, a researcher approached people waiting in line at a photocopy machine and asked if they could step ahead in the queue.
When the request was made without explanation, a modest portion of people agreed, and when the same request included a reason, compliance increased dramatically. What was truly striking about the study was that the explanation did not need to contain any meaningful information at all. Even a statement such as "May I use the copier because I need to make copies" produced a substantial increase in agreement.
Simply put, all they needed to do was ask.
We underestimate how willing people are to help
Langer's interpretation was that people frequently rely on mental shortcuts when responding to requests. In everyday life, the difference between a request that gets a no and one that gets a nod of approval often lies in the simple act of explaining why the request is being made in the first place.
Another body of research suggests that the difficulty people experience with asking for help is often rooted less in persuasion technique and more in our entirely miscalibrated expectations. Psychologists Flynn and Lake conducted a series of experiments (e.g., Flynn and Lake, 2008) in which participants approached strangers with small requests. Before approaching anyone, participants estimated how many people they expected would agree, and the kicker is that they anticipated far more rejection than they actually encountered.
A third classic finding adds another layer to this dynamic. In the "foot in the door" experiments conducted in the 1960s (Freedman and Fraser, 1966), researchers asked homeowners to agree to a small request, such as signing a petition related to safe driving. Later, those same homeowners were approached with a much larger request, and what the study found was that individuals who had previously agreed to the smaller request were far more likely to accept the larger one.
The students returning from their scavenger hunt experienced this dynamic firsthand in how their initial hesitation gave way to curiosity as strangers responded with unexpected generosity and genuine interest in the story behind the request.
For most, the surprising pile of items on the classroom desk was less important than the realization that most of the barriers they had imagined never existed in the first place.
The exercise also hints at a small experiment you can run yourself this week, which is to pick one thing you quietly assumed you could not have and simply ask for it.
Who knows, it just might be one word away?