Why Big Favours Flop

Commenting on my recent post, 'I Took a Bribe,' (on the persuasive power of small gifts and unsolicited favours) Girish asks an interesting question about why big favours don’t lead to the same kind of results as small favours. He says that people don’t even care to acknowledge big favours.

If a small unsolicited favour can pay rich dividends in persuasion, it is reasonable to assume that big solicited and unsolicited favours should lead to even bigger returns on investment.  This generally holds good. Yet a big favour you have done may fail spectacularly when you try to influence the recipient. This is what Girish is referring to.

In order to understand this phenomenon, let's first look at the way bribe generally works. The size varies depending on the kind of service you are looking for. Often you pay a bribe to get what you are perfectly entitled to. You want to avoid artificial delays and related hassles. Then you may find yourself paying a bribe to jump the queue or to get what you are not strictly entitled to. There are also people who pay bribes so that they can break rules with impunity. These attract the biggest bribes because the bride-taker also runs a big risk. In some of these instances there may be a demand; in many instances you have to infer that a bribe is expected or that a bribe will do the job that you are interested in.

What is common to all these instances is that the recipient of the bribe doesn't deserve it. It is a different matter that he will justify it by pointing out that everyone else is doing it, that he runs a risk, and so on. If the bribe's recipient believes that he deserves it, he doesn't feel obliged to do anything in return whether the favour done is solicited or unsolicited.  This may appear strange but friends and relations often belong to this category.  So the next time you do what you consider to be a big favour and discover that you have no leverage over its recipient, ask yourself whether they aren't taking you for granted. Most probably they are. They don't consider it a favour.

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