Adam Grant

The evidence is clear.

Not only is that a path to emotional exhaustion, it doesn't actually build strong connections.

It creates one-sided relationships where we feel used instead of supported.

And at work, it can undermine rather than advance our progress.

I needed to learn to say no.

But just saying no is not as easy as it sounds.

Vanessa Bonds is a professor of organizational behavior at Cornell and the author of You Have More Influence Than You Think.

She's an expert on the psychology of saying no.

Vanessa knows this from experience.

She has a long history of people pleasing.

Are you just saying that to please me right now?

In one of her early studies, Vanessa investigated whether people say yes to requests more often than we realized.

She asked people in New York City to guess the odds that strangers would agree to onerous requests, like walking them to a destination they couldn't find or even borrowing their cell phone.

Then she sent them out to actually make those requests.

Even New Yorkers said yes a lot more than expected.

Nearly half agreed to walk people to their destinations and nearly half handed over their cell phones.

So why do we say yes so often, even to questionable requests from total strangers?

Especially at work, where pay and promotions often seem to be riding on saying yes.

Surprisingly, we often feel extra pressure with more distant colleagues.

It's called the acquaintance trap.