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, 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 (18171862)
“It has often been a solid Grief to me, when I have reflected on this glorious Nation, which is the Scene of publick Happiness and Liberty, that there are still Crowds of private Tyrants, against whom there neither is any Law now in Being, nor can there be invented any by the Wit of Man. These cruel Men are ill-natured husbands.”
—Richard Steele (16721729)
“[The Republican Party] consists of those who, believing in the doctrine that mankind are capable of governing themselves and hating hereditary power as an insult to the reason and an outrage to the rights of men, are naturally offended at every public measure that does not appeal to the understanding and to the general interest of the community.”
—James Madison (17511836)
“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 (19081986)