Want a friend to do you a favour? Ask them in PERSON! People are more likely to help when asked face-to-face than over video call or email, study reveals
- In the study, 888 participants were told to ask five friends for a favour
- This was face-to-face, by video call, audio call, audio message or video message
- Results revealed people were most likely to agree to help when asked in person
- Researchers suggest it may be more awkward to say no in person
When asking for help at work, it may be tempting to simply email or DM a colleague.
But new research suggests that if you want someone to do you a favour, you should ask them in person.
Researchers from Ryerson University in Toronto found that people are much more likely to agree to help when asked face-to-face than over video call or email.
In their study, published in Social Psychological and Personality Science, the researchers, led by M. Mahdi Roghanizad, said: ‘We found that seeking help in-person was far superior to seeking help through any form of mediated communication channel – including seeking help over synchronous, with- face video channels.’
When asking for help at work, it may be tempting to simply email or DM a colleague. But new research suggests that if you want someone to do you a favour, you should ask them in person (stock image)
It’s all in the eye contact
Being confronted by a pair of eyeballs makes us relate information to the thing we care about most – ourselves.
Being looked at makes us think about what the other person is seeing.
And by making us focus our attention inwards, it helps us relate directly to the new information, the researchers from France and Finland said.
It makes us act in a more ‘pro-social’, altruistic way because we care about our own reputation.
In the study, the researchers carried out an experiment to understand the best communication channels for asking for help.
In the experiment, 888 participants were told to ask five friends for a favour via a randomly assigned – face-to-face, video call, audio call, audio message or video message.
The favour was proofreading half a page of writing, and participants followed a pre-written script to ensure consistency.
Before they set off to ask for help, the participants were also asked to guess how they imagined their friends would react.
The results revealed that face-to-face was by far the most effective way to ask for help.
Despite this, participants had failed to guess that asking for help in person would be more successful than asking via video message or video call.
‘Of course, there are situations in which meeting up with a potential helper is simply too costly or inconvenient, and requesters may therefore choose to communicate with colleagues and friends through mediated channels, regardless of the advantages of face-to-face communication,’ the researchers added.
‘Our studies suggest that in these cases, there are benefits to using richer communication media, such as video and audio channels.’
While the research didn’t look at why asking for help face-to-face is more effective, the researchers suggest that it may be more awkward to say ‘no’ in person than through other channels.
‘It is less awkward to reject someone when one has the time and space to find the right words to say “no” and when one does not have to say “no” to the other person’s face,’ they added.
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