Getting a stranger to tell you no is way harder than you'd think. People say yes to random requests about twice as often as they expect to, which is why a college kid doing a rejection assignment had to walk up to a girl and ask if he could wash her hair just to make sure he'd fail. There's real research on this, and the numbers are kind of hilarious. Back in 2008, two psychologists, Frank Flynn and Vanessa Bohns, sent students out on campus to ask strangers for small favors. Before they left, each student had to guess how many people they'd need to ask. For a short survey, they guessed around 20 people and it took about 10. To borrow somebody's phone, they guessed 10 and needed 6. And when they asked strangers to walk them a couple blocks to the campus gym, they figured they'd have to ask 7 people, and it took a little over 2. Then they tried it with actual money. Volunteers fundraising for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society thought they'd have to hit up around 210 people to reach their goal. They needed about 122, and people gave $64 on average when the volunteers had been expecting $48. Bohns kept running versions of this for more than a decade, with over 14,000 strangers, and people lowballed how often they'd hear yes by almost half pretty much every time. She figured out why, too. When you ask somebody for something, your brain is busy sizing up the favor, and it totally skips over how uncomfortable it is for the other person to look you in the face and turn you down. That discomfort is strong enough that in some of her later studies, strangers went along with small acts of vandalism just because someone asked them directly. Jia Jiang found this out the fun way. In 2012 he quit a six-figure job four days before his son was born, got shot down by an investor, and decided to get rejected on purpose every day for 100 days. He was using a game a Canadian guy named Jason Comely made up, where the only way to win is to hear no. On day 3 he walked into a Krispy Kreme in Austin and asked them to make donuts shaped like the Olympic rings. An employee named Jackie grabbed some paper, sketched out the colors, and came back about 15 minutes later with the box. She didn't even charge him. Which means if you need a guaranteed no from a stranger, you have to get about as weird as "can I wash your hair." And whatever you've been too nervous to ask for lately is probably a lot closer to a yes than it feels.