Power of Reciprocity? What is the Unknown?
Posted By Marty Higgins | December 12th, 2008
By Steve Martin, CMCT
Most people will happily agree to help a colleague out at work who has helped them out previously, take their turn to buy lunch when others have bought lunch before and remember to send a birthday card to the people who have sent them a card on their birthday.
The principle of reciprocity is a well accepted societal norm and has been extensively studied by social scientists. Its influence runs so deep that obligations can reach long and powerfully into the future (Cialdini 2001). But will people be just as likely to live up to the rule of reciprocity and return a favor in situations where nobody will ever know if the favor is returned?
Researchers Jerry Burger and his colleagues from the Department of Psychology at Santa Clara University tested this idea by setting up a study in which participants were asked to take part in a series of tasks to test “personality and perception skills”. In fact the “personality and perception” tests were a cover for the real study which involved certain participants being given a bottle of water by another study participant (the favor condition). The person who gave out this unexpected gift was actually a research assistant involved in the study. In a second condition the research assistant didn’t hand out bottles of water to anyone (the no-favor condition).
At the end of the test the researcher asked all the participants if they would be willing to complete a survey and return it a couple of days later. Half the people asked to complete the survey were led to believe that the person would be present when they returned the survey but the other half were told to leave the survey anonymously in a drop off box.
As you would expect, significantly more people who were given a bottle of water complied with the request to complete and return the survey compared with the group that were not given a bottle of water (30% v 5%). A good example of the reciprocity effect in action.
What is potentially more interesting is the fact that the people who believed their response would be anonymous were just as likely to live up to the rule of reciprocity and return the survey as those who believed that their act of repayment would be witnessed.
This means that even in situations where the giver of the original favor is unlikely to find out whether their favor has been reciprocated, they can be confident there is a good chance it will be.
This fact should be especially comforting for those working in certain business environments.
Leaders who employ large teams of people and manage them through groups of other managers, or managers who lead teams who work in different office locations (or even different countries) can be assured that even if they only rarely see their staff they should never fail to seek ways to employ the principle of reciprocity. Giving your time, trust, attention and providing useful information will be useful activities that teams will be likely to reciprocate even if you are not around to witness it.
Another situation where this study could provide useful insights is for those who do business online and as a result rarely, if ever, come face to face with their customers and consumers.
Given the increased anonymity of online environments and the fact that people are just as likely to live up to their obligations even when there are no witnesses, should mean that anything your business does to promote new custom (such as offering trial periods, newly published reports or exclusive software) should be an effective use of the societal rule of the ‘good old give and take’.
Either way, known or unknown, the principle of reciprocity continues to be a powerful force in persuading others.
Source:
Jerry M. Burger, Jackeline Sanchez, Jenny E. Imberi, & Lucia R. Grande. The norm of reciprocity as an internalized social norm: Returning favors even when no one finds out.
Social Influence 2008
