Notes

The studies of predicted and actual agreement in chapter 3 are Francis Flynn and Vanessa Lake, "If you need help, just ask: underestimating compliance with direct requests for help", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2008, volume 95, pages 128 to 143. Vanessa Lake and Vanessa Bohns are the same researcher, so most of the evidence in that chapter comes from one group. The samples were small, between about 30 and 90 people per study, and a fair number of students dropped out before making any requests. They may have been the most pessimistic ones. The summary of later work is her paper, "(Mis)understanding our influence over others: a review of the underestimation-of-compliance effect", Current Directions in Psychological Science, 2016, volume 25, pages 119 to 123. It's a review of her own research programme and not an independent pooling of studies. It reports that the effect was weaker in China than in the United States, and that it reversed for requests made by flyer or email.

The botanical garden experiment in chapter 4 is from Xuan Zhao and Nicholas Epley, "Surprisingly happy to have helped: underestimating prosociality creates a misplaced barrier to asking for help", Psychological Science, 2022, volume 33, pages 1708 to 1731. There were 2,118 participants across the set, all in the United States. The garden experiment involved 50 pairs. In it the askers overestimated how uncomfortable the strangers would find it to refuse, which is the opposite of what Flynn and Lake's explanation predicts. The finding about spending on others is Elizabeth Dunn, Lara Aknin and Michael Norton, "Spending money on others promotes happiness", Science, 2008, volume 319, pages 1687 to 1688. The original experiment was very small. The repeat is Lara Aknin, Elizabeth Dunn, Jason Proulx, Iris Lok and Michael Norton, "Does spending money on others promote happiness? A registered replication report", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2020, volume 119, pages e15 to e26. It found a modest effect when people made a real purchase, and a very small one or none when they only recalled a purchase.

The belief that one is a burden on others, in the fixed and general form mentioned in chapters 1 and 4, is one of the central ideas in Kimberly Van Orden and colleagues, "The interpersonal theory of suicide", Psychological Review, 2010, volume 117, pages 575 to 600. The authors hold that the belief is nearly always a misperception, and one that therapy can change.

In chapter 5, the advice study is Alison Wood Brooks, Francesca Gino and Maurice Schweitzer, "Smart people ask for (my) advice: seeking advice boosts perceptions of competence", Management Science, 2015, volume 61, pages 1421 to 1435. It concerns asking for advice, which is not the same as asking someone to do work for you. Several other papers co-authored by Francesca Gino were retracted in 2023 over data problems. I found no retraction of this one. On the Many Co-Authors website, where her co-authors report who collected the data for each study, the other two authors say she was involved in collecting the data for one of the paper's eight studies. That study is the one behind the condition that the rater must be the person asked. For the rest, including the brain-teaser study the chapter describes, they say they don't know. That's one reason the chapter treats the paper as suggestive. The work on status is Fiona Lee, "When the going gets tough, do the tough ask for help? Help seeking and power motivation in organizations", Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 1997, volume 72, pages 336 to 363. The field study of leaders is Ashleigh Shelby Rosette, Jennifer Mueller and David Lebel, "Are male leaders penalized for seeking help? The influence of gender and asking behaviors on competence perceptions", The Leadership Quarterly, 2015, volume 26, pages 749 to 762. In the field study, surveys came from 65 students. The follow-up experiment had 358. The account of what harms a reputation at work is my own view. I couldn't find a sound source that puts a figure on the cost of not asking, so the chapter doesn't give one.

The favour experiment in chapter 6 is Jon Jecker and David Landy, "Liking a person as a function of doing him a favour", Human Relations, 1969, volume 22, pages 371 to 378. The later study is Yu Niiya, "Does a favor request increase liking toward the requester?", The Journal of Social Psychology, 2016, volume 156, pages 211 to 221. I know of no large modern repeat of the original. The description of how accounts between friends work is my interpretation.

In chapter 8, the drinks study is from Thomas Gilovich, Kenneth Savitsky and Victoria Husted Medvec, "The illusion of transparency: biased assessments of others' ability to read one's emotional states", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1998, volume 75, pages 332 to 346. The helper's error is Vanessa Bohns and Francis Flynn, "Why didn't you just ask? Underestimating the discomfort of help-seeking", Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 2010, volume 46, pages 402 to 409. The study of couples, used again in chapter 9, is Nancy Collins and Brooke Feeney, "A safe haven: an attachment theory perspective on support seeking and caregiving in intimate relationships", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2000, volume 78, pages 1053 to 1073. A related paper reports two interview studies. Among 116 women on low incomes, fear of rejection went with hinting. Among 177 women who had been abused, hinting went with less supportive responses and direct requests with more supportive ones. That one is Stacey Williams and Kristin Mickelson, "A paradox of support seeking and rejection among the stigmatized", Personal Relationships, 2008, volume 15, pages 493 to 509. All of this is correlational. I found no experiment that compares a vague request with a specific one and counts who helps.

The review in chapter 9 is Michael Addis and James Mahalik, "Men, masculinity, and the contexts of help seeking", American Psychologist, 2003, volume 58, pages 5 to 14. It's a review and an argument with no new data, and it's mainly about health care in North America. The three conditions the chapter lists are proposals from that argument and weren't tested in the paper. The account of how children learn not to ask is my interpretation.

In chapter 10, the email study is Mahdi Roghanizad and Vanessa Bohns, "Ask in person: you're less persuasive than you think over email", Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 2017, volume 69, pages 223 to 226. It's a short report on one kind of request put to strangers. I couldn't read the full paper, and the summaries I found disagree on the exact face-to-face figure, so the chapter says only "most". The research on thanks is Adam Grant and Francesca Gino, "A little thanks goes a long way: explaining why gratitude expressions motivate prosocial behavior", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2010, volume 98, pages 946 to 955. Adam Grant has said publicly that Francesca Gino collected the data for the first two of its four experiments and that he never saw the raw data. The third, a field experiment with 41 university fundraisers, wasn't collected by her. It found that a director's thanks in person was followed by more calls that week. A later and larger test is Anurada Amarasekera and colleagues, "What types of gratitude expressions promote prosocial behavior? A registered report", Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 2025, volume 121, article 104805. I've read the authors' own summary of it and not the paper. They report that among more than 600 students, a thank-you made no difference to later helping. Among more than 800 adults, those who were thanked gave a little more to a second charity. So the chapter calls the research mixed. The "when X happens, I'll do Y" plans are known in the research as implementation intentions. See Peter Gollwitzer and Paschal Sheeran, "Implementation intentions and goal achievement: a meta-analysis of effects and processes", Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 2006, volume 38, pages 69 to 119. None of the studies it pools were about asking for help.

The study of second requests in chapter 11 is Daniel Newark, Francis Flynn and Vanessa Bohns, "Once bitten, twice shy: the effect of a past refusal on expectations of future compliance", Social Psychological and Personality Science, 2014, volume 5, pages 218 to 225.

The review in chapter 12 is Julianne Holt-Lunstad, Timothy Smith and Bradley Layton, "Social relationships and mortality risk: a meta-analytic review", PLoS Medicine, 2010, volume 7, article e1000316. The link was strongest for broad measures of how involved people were with others, and weakest for the plain fact of living with someone.

The rule and the method in chapter 10, the idea of the swerve, the difference between a plan and a habit, and the advice on refusals, big asks and lapses are my own reasoning, built on the research above. Test them against your own experience, as the exercises ask you to.

This book is general information and is no substitute for medical or psychological care.