The case
Franklin, in the Autobiography (LIT-1402), on his re-election as clerk of the General Assembly: “a new member made a long speech against me, in order to favour some other candidate.” Franklin “did not, however, aim at gaining his favour by paying any servile respect to him”. Instead: “Having heard that he had in his library a certain very scarce and curious book, I wrote a note to him, expressing my desire of perusing that book, and requesting he would do me the favour of lending it to me for a few days. He sent it immediately, and I return’d it in about a week with another note, expressing strongly my sense of the favour. When we next met in the House, he spoke to me (which he had never done before), and with great civility; and he ever after manifested a readiness to serve me on all occasions, so that we became great friends, and our friendship continued to his death.” Franklin’s maxim: “He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged.”
The experimental descendant is Jecker and Landy (1969, LIT-1419): as A1 reported it, participants who returned their winnings at the experimenter’s personal request then rated the experimenter more favourably. A1 added that its direct replication record is limited.
What it shows
- The order of act and attitude. The help came before the liking. The conventional reading runs the other way (I like you, so I help you), and CLAIM-275 holds that an act can come before the interpretation it makes available.
- A role, not a reason. The request gave the rival something to do for Franklin, not an argument about Franklin. CLAIM-430 reads that as an invitation to enact a relation the adversarial arrangement did not hold.
- Three explanations it does not decide between. Dissonance (the helper reconciles act and attitude), self-perception (the helper infers his attitude from his act), and the relational reading (the request signals trust and opens a cooperative exchange). A1 listed all three and said they “aren’t mutually exclusive”.
What it does not show
- That the effect is reliable. One anecdote, and an experimental record A1 called limited.
- Which mechanism worked. The account records the outcome, not the rival’s reasons, and Franklin wrote it as a lesson.
Note of 2026-10-29: the Autobiography, read
The Autobiography, LIT-1402, is now read in full (NOTE-1360). The case tells the anecdote as the text does, and its standing as the anecdote’s is right. Two details can be added. Franklin describes the member as “a gentleman of fortune and education, with talents that were likely to give him, in time, great influence in the House”, and gives the profit of the clerkship as his reason for winning him over. The text gives no name for the member.
On CLAIM-275: Franklin’s own account of why it worked is the maxim, not an interpretation that followed the act, and the text says nothing about what the member came to think. So the anecdote fits the claim’s shape and does not show its mechanism, as “What it does not show” already says. The case is unchanged.