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:
“They make a great ado nowadays about hard times; but I think that ... this general failure, both private and public, is rather occasion for rejoicing, as reminding us whom we have at the helm,—that justice is always done. If our merchants did not most of them fail, and the banks too, my faith in the old laws of the world would be staggered.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“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)
“Mens sana in men’s sauna, in the flush
Of health and toilets, private and corporal glee,”
—Anthony Hecht (b. 1923)
“By persistently remaining single, a man converts himself into a permanent public temptation. Men should be more careful.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“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)