Does giving patients a free gift actually make them more likely to accept treatment? Yes, and the effect is stronger than most dentists believe. When you give someone something of value with no strings attached, you create a quiet debt obligation, and people are wired to pay debts back. Researchers proved this decades ago. The restaurant that drops a mint with the check gets a bigger tip. The survey with a dollar tucked in the envelope gets filled out even when the real payment on the back end is ten times larger. None of that is about logic. It is reciprocity, [...]