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A series of studies reveals that people tend to grossly underestimate how likely others are to agree to requests for assistance.

"Our research should encourage people to ask for help and not assume that others are disinclined to comply," says Frank Flynn, associate professor of organizational behavior at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

"People are more willing to help than you think, and that can be important to know when you're trying to get the resources you need to get a job done, when you're trying to solicit funds, or what have you."

In fact, Flynn and Vanessa Lake, a Columbia University psychology doctoral student, have already had feedback to that effect on their paper, published in the July 2008 issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Participants asked to borrow strangers' cell phones in order to make calls back to the experimenter, solicited individuals to fill out questionnaires, and asked students to help them find the campus gym - a favor that required obliging students to walk with a participant for at least two blocks in the direction of the gym.

The researchers found that participants consistently overestimated by 50 percent the number of people they'd have to ask to get a certain number to agree with each request.

These volunteers, who receive training for endurance sports events in exchange for fundraising for the society, were asked to estimate the number of people they thought they would have to solicit to reach their fundraising goal, as well as the average donation they expected.

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