I went to the gym about a month and a half ago and forgot my key card to scan in. For years, I have simply walked up to the counter, smiled, scanned my card, and walked into the locker room to put my back in a locker. One of the ladies at the counter said, “It’s okay, you can go in.” A month and a half later, I am waving and saying, “Hello,” every day to those same ladies every time I see them.
You see this in your day-to-day life all the time. If you join a two-person virtual meeting, for example, and one of you does not have their camera on, you know that within about one minute, you’ll both either have your cameras on or off. If someone waves to you on the street, you will usually wave back. If someone asks you how you are, you will usually ask how they are back. It’s the ethic of reciprocity, and it’s one of the near-universal, biologically influenced ethics.
Reciprocity evolved as an ethic in social animals because for living organisms to cooperate, they have to trust each other. By trust, we’re referring to here the belief that the other person won’t do something to hurt them. That trust has to be mutual: if one person doesn’t trust the other, you cannot cooperate. So both parties have to not harm the other and believe that the other person will not harm them. The most effective way to get there is to reciprocate: if someone is generous to you, then you respond by being generous to them. If they harm you, you retaliate. That reciprocity evolved because those who cooperated survived, and reciprocity is one of the key aspects of cooperation—both because it ensures continued cooperation (i.e., why expend resources to help someone if they don’t help you back?) and because non-cooperative behavior is punished with corrective action.
So, reciprocity is built into us for our survival and social well-being. But, of course, there is a rationale on top of it that we build through logic. In my gym example, the lady at the counter recognized me and knew that I was a regular paying member. She could’ve been a stickler for the rules and made me go back and get it. She could’ve even made me manually sign in (and that would’ve been more than fair and helpful to me for forgetting). But she just waved me in. Rationally, that means she knew enough about me to trust me that I didn’t stop paying my bill the day before and try to get one more workout in before they found out. Given that kindness, my biology kicked in and I started waving and saying, “Hello,” the next time I went. A month and a half later, I knew there names. This was after four full years of silent smiling and keeping to myself. That’s how powerful reciprocity is.
Once you understand it, this power can be used for good or evil. You might see those unethical social media influencers who get millions of views for antagonizing people until they retaliate with violence. Social media doesn’t care what kind of attention the account gets; they care that they get as much attention as possible because it converts into ad revenue. You might also see a less malicious use of this in the form of fundraising efforts mailing you address labels or other small gestures that trigger your reciprocity instincts to respond with a monetary donation. But it’s difficult to draw the line between what’s a constructive or manipulative use of this since we use it every day to make friends, exchange goods and services, perform favors, and do our part in common activities (e.g., picking up trash, reducing waste, not making too much noise). One thing is for sure, though: when the positive reciprocity is broken, the negative ones come out: slight someone, and they’ll trash you behind your back; don’t pick up your trash at someone’s house, and they won’t pick up theirs at yours; play a prank on someone, and they’ll get you back. After all, if it was okay for them to dish it, it’s only fair that they should be able to take it, too.
There is one strange caveat to reciprocity: the instinct to reciprocate can be turned off in several situations. The first one is in relationships. If you do not wish to have a certain relationship with someone, then the person won’t reciprocate any positive actions no matter what you do. Favors, gifts, etc. will either be rejected (so that reciprocation can’t be expected) or taken and unrequited. Interestingly, modern grievance philosophies have broken many people’s reciprocity sensors, as they make people think that they are owed something for nothing, thereby trying to demand things from others that they will never reciprocate: expecting love, time, attention, and money from someone else for nothing in return; expecting others to give money while they don’t have to (or they even get to take money); expecting others to solve a problem while they simply get to complain and enjoy the benefits without having to contribute. Unfortunately, in many modern situations, the reciprocity system is broken. How/Why? Because it’s a mentality that the person already sacrificed in some way, so it’s others that owe them. This attitude, unfortunately, often comes with tribal mindsets where one person from a group can appropriate the legitimate complaints of someone else from the group for their own personal gain. Many people are walking around with destructive mindsets thinking that others should be doing things for them while they do nothing for others, and this can lead to many societal problems, as we’re seeing in things like higher rates of loneliness, divorce, depression, and other indicators of uncooperative behavior permeating society.
And, as I talk about often on this topic, there is always the possibility of a reciprocal death spiral or virtuous cycle when reciprocity comes into play: the idea that if you do something bad/good, someone else does something worse/better, so you do something worse/better, and it continues to escalate. The bad side of escalation is why police and trained mediators have to learn deescalation tactics: to repurpose the funny saying, “The beatings will continue until morale improves,” the escalation will continue until the escalating reciprocity ceases. If the back and forth keeps escalating, someone has to break the cycle for reciprocity to stop. There are only two ways to stop it: to reciprocate to an equal or lesser degree than the previous action (note: it has to be equal or lesser from the actor’s perspective) or to end it through a final act such as a third party reciprocating equally or restraining both parties, one person harming the other so they can’t retaliate, or time running out during an interaction.
In these cases, it’s important to note how to break the power of reciprocity to avoid things getting out of hand. This is sometimes true in virtuous cycles, too: they call this “one-upping” where one person does something nice, so the other person does something nicer, and so on and so on until the point at which the gestures get out of hand. Both forms of escalating reciprocity are made fun of often in sitcoms such as Seinfeld. Seinfeld had dozens of reciprocity slights, from George not getting the “Thank you” for buying the Big Salad to Jerry buying the Cadillac for his father to whether the Costanzas get a unit at Del Boca Vista. The humor lies in how ridiculous the reciprocity can get—with people being viewed as “petty” if they can’t let minor infractions go without reciprocity.
So what can you do with this information? There are several takeaways that you can have for your life to make things a little easier:
Reciprocity is a huge part of your life, and so you should really get a good feeling for how it works if you want to have good relationships. It’s amazing how essential it is to every part of people’s lives and yet most people don’t even consciously understand how or why they feel compelled to act in a certain way. From silly examples like Marty McFly being called “chicken” in Back to the Future and my waving and saying, “Hello,” after getting let in without my card to serious ones like nuclear war, reciprocity appears in a variety of ways. To ensure that you are living the best life that you can, you should consider how you and the people in your life are reciprocating and how to adjust your behavior to optimize your relationships accordingly.