Private and Public Reciprocity
Private reciprocity, also known as internal reciprocity, emphasizes repaying favors because of personal morals and an inherent obligation. Failing to repay kind favors brings feelings of guilt.
Public reciprocity, also known as social reciprocity, emphasizes acts of reciprocity and kindness that are publicly acknowledged, where the receiver knows who the provider is, with no anonymity. There is less of a personal reward, as the individual now is rewarded for following the social norm.
Mark A. Whatley and colleagues (1999) found that people who receive a favor will often return the favor, as opposed to people who are not given a favor and have the opportunity to give a favor. They also found that people will give more favors, like a higher donation, if it is a public condition.
Read more about this topic: Norm Of Reciprocity
Famous quotes containing the words private and public, private and, private, public and/or reciprocity:
“The new sound-sphere is global. It ripples at great speed across languages, ideologies, frontiers and races.... The economics of this musical esperanto is staggering. Rock and pop breed concentric worlds of fashion, setting and life-style. Popular music has brought with it sociologies of private and public manner, of group solidarity. The politics of Eden come loud.”
—George Steiner (b. 1929)
“One key, one solution to the mysteries of the human condition, one solution to the old knots of fate, freedom, and foreknowledge, exists, the propounding, namely, of the double consciousness. A man must ride alternately on the horses of his private and public nature, as the equestrians in the circus throw themselves nimbly from horse to horse, or plant one foot on the back of one, and the other foot on the back of the other.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“It was evident that, both on account of the feudal system and the aristocratic government, a private man was not worth so much in Canada as in the United States; and, if your wealth in any measure consists in manliness, in originality and independence, you had better stay here. How could a peaceable, freethinking man live neighbor to the Forty-ninth Regiment? A New-Englander would naturally be a bad citizen, probably a rebel, there,—certainly if he were already a rebel at home.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The blacksmith dropped his hammer, the carpenter his plane, the mason his trowel, the farmer his sickle, the baker his loaf, and the tapster his bottle. All were off for the mines, some on horses, some on carts, and some on crutches, and one went in a litter.”
—For the State of California, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Between women love is contemplative; caresses are intended less to gain possession of the other than gradually to re-create the self through her; separateness is abolished, there is no struggle, no victory, no defeat; in exact reciprocity each is at once subject and object, sovereign and slave; duality become mutuality.”
—Simone De Beauvoir (1908–1986)