Or, Beware of Strangers Bearing Unexpected Gifts
Tada yori takai mono wa nai
[Nothing is more costly than something given free of charge].
—Popular Japanese saying
I
t often seems that people are the greediest of animals, that we’re hap- piest when we get as much as we can while giving up as little as possi- ble. It’s not so. Research shows that most of us are usually driven by a sense of equity and fairness. When someone does something for us or gives us something, we feel obligated to do something for that person in return. The favor may create any of several feelings: gratitude, a sense of decency and social responsibility, or simple feelings of guilt.No matter which, it activates one of the most powerful of social norms, the reciprocity rule, whereby we feel compelled to repay, in equitable value, what another person has given to us.
Alan Gouldner, in his seminal study of the reciprocity rule, found that it appears in every culture.1“There is no duty more indispensable than that of returning a kindness,” wrote Cicero. “All men distrust one forgetful of a benefit.” For example, when Columbus first set foot in America he encountered people who’d been devoid of any cultural con- tact with Europeans or their ancestors for many tens of thousands of years, probably going back to the Mesolithic era. No one at those early meetings, however, needed to be instructed about the reciprocity rules.
One of the very first activities Columbus and the Indians began was giv- ing each other gifts. In colonial America the term Indian giftcame to mean a gift for which you expected an equivalent one in return.2
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Columbus’s experience has been repeated in endless cross-cultural encounters.
Reciprocity is one of the oldest and most fundamental guides for human social interaction. It lays the basis for virtually every type of social relationship, from the legalities of business arrangements to the subtle exchanges within a romance. Without it, there can be no assuredness that if I give to you this time you’ll give back the next time.
And if there’s no trust, there can be no trade. Given the evolutionary value of trade—between individuals, businesses, and governments—it’s no wonder the law of reciprocity has become so strongly ingrained. It’s been called the moral memory of humankind.
The reciprocity effect was first experimentally demonstrated in a classic study by social psychologist Dennis Regan. Regan had subjects work in pairs on a bogus task supposedly measuring art appreciation.
One of the subjects, let’s call him Andy, was actually a paid actor work- ing as Regan’s assistant. During a short rest period in the middle of the experiment, Andy left for a couple of minutes. For half the subjects (the gift group), Andy returned with two Cokes, handing one to the subject and keeping one for himself, explaining, “I asked him [the experi- menter] if I could go get myself a Coke, and he said it was OK, so I brought one for you, too.” For the other half (the control group), Andy returned without a gift. In both conditions, Andy later asked the sub- ject to do him a favor. Andy said that he was selling raffle tickets for his high school back home and that he’d get a prize if he sold the most tick- ets. Would the subject be willing to buy one or more tickets? In clear support of the reciprocity theory, Andy sold almost twice as many tick- ets to people he’d given a free Coke earlier.
Most surprising, however, was the power of the effect. In another part of the study, Regan varied the likability of the actor. Here, the receptionist left on an errand just as the subject and Andy were waiting for the “experiment” to begin. The phone rang shortly later and, after several rings, Andy picked it up. In half the cases (the pleasant condi- tion), Andy answered the call appropriately and politely. For the other half (the unpleasant condition), he acted obnoxiously, responding:
“Nah, there’s no secretary here. . . . Look, I don’t work here, lady, for chrissake. . . . Just call later . . .” Andy hung up, clearly in midcon- versation, without saying good-bye.
It’s well established, as we’ve seen, that people are more willing to do favors for people they like. It comes as no surprise then that Andy
sold more tickets when he acted pleasantly. Here’s what was remark- able, however: the importance of Andy’s likableness paled in compari- son to whether he’d given the subject an unsolicited gift. Whereas the free Coke almost doubled raffle sales, acting obnoxiously (compared to acting pleasantly) reduced sales by only about 20 percent. More telling yet, the free Coke had as much of an effect on ticket sales when Andy was an obnoxious person as when he was polite. In other words, when the need for reciprocity was aroused, it didn’t matter whether they liked him or not. They “owed,” and so they paid. Reciprocity can be a dicta- torial force, and it can come in many shapes and sizes.3
Giri: Reciprocity, Japanese-Style
In some cultures, the reciprocity principle is even more influential.
I stumbled headfirst into this realization a few years ago. I’d been mak- ing plans to spend several months as a visiting researcher at a univer- sity in Sapporo, Japan. The work arrangements had fallen nicely into place but questions about day-to-day living had me frightened. After all, I was a gaijin (the Japanese term for foreigner or, literally, outside person) heading into the abyss of not only an alien country, but a ridicu- lously expensive alien country. Complicating the pressures even more, I was traveling with my wife and young son. How would we survive without knowing the language and without going bankrupt?
But my hosts-to-be, in an astonishing display of Japanese-style gra- ciousness and efficiency, came to the rescue. First they found us a uni- versity-owned apartment for our stay—for free, no less. Then they passed the hat among their friends and rounded up more than enough furniture and household paraphernalia to get us by. Our only cost was a cleaning crew (which was exorbitantly expensive but, boy, was that apartment clean). Mind you, these gifts were from people we’d never met before.
Soon after our arrival in Sapporo, we went shopping for a thank- you gift for my department chairman’s wife, the woman who more than anyone was responsible for our very generous arrangements. Every- thing we considered, however, was shockingly expensive. One friend had suggested that being from California, we might consider giving our hosts a gift melon, a popular cantaloupe-type fruit that is frequently given as presents. The decent ones, however, turned out to start at close
to $100 each, with the premium specimens selling for upwards of $500.
After a few hours of discouraging shopping like this, we settled on flow- ers—a bottom-of-the-line, very simple bouquet of flowers.
I looked up the Japanese words for “It’s not much, but please accept this small token,” and, that evening, we presented our humble offering.
Our hostess looked confused and, when she realized we were giving her a gift, shocked.
“Please wait,” she pleaded, and ran back to find her husband. From the other room, we heard a hysterical conversation in Japanese. Obvi- ously, we’d done something very wrong. But what?
“Cheapskate,” my wife whispered to me. “I told you we should have popped for the roses.”
After a few minutes, the couple calmed down and seemed to have arrived at a solution. They led us into the dining room and apologized profusely because what they were about to give us was wayinferior to our bouquet of flowers. They then sliced each of us a fat helping of a really nice-looking melon. We were terribly embarrassed and began apologizing equally profusely for our flowers. After a couple of minutes of this competitive apologizing, we all shut up and ate our melons.
My wife and I left assuming the crisis was over. But we were way out of our league. Early the next morning, there was a knock on our door. Our hostess, now looking completely in command, proudly handed us three gift-wrapped boxes. She apologized, naturally, for the meager offerings she was insulting us with. The first box contained a set of books for my son, the second was a vase (no, it couldn’t be that
$150 piece we saw while shopping, could it?), and the third held the biggest bouquet of flowers I’d seen since my cousin Tessa’s bat mitz- vah. She then insisted we join her for lunch at a nice restaurant.
Think about this. A woman we barely knew—and not a particularly wealthy one, from what I could tell—had just given us well over a hun- dred dollars in gifts. I would have liked to believe it was because we were such a lovable family. But, it now seemed clear, this was a question of culture.
I phoned a bicultural friend, a former New Yorker named Howard, who’d been living in Japan for many years. Howard understood the sit- uation right away. I’d apparently walked into one of the most powerful yet subtly defined of Japanese cultural norms: the principle of giri,or obligation. The group-oriented Japanese culture, my friend explained, is driven by rules about duty—duty to one’s family, company, and
country, and even culturally illiterate outsiders like me. These rules are written nowhere, but you won’t find a Japanese person with a morsel of maturity who doesn’t understand them. Faltering on one’s giriis a serious offense that carries the stiffest of Japanese penalties: shame and rejection.
The particular giri I had created in my hosts carried a double whammy. To begin with, because I was a foreign guest—in fact, a guest at their university—they had an obligation to treat me with first-rate Japanese hospitality, which is, in fact, an enormous standard. (To my everlasting gratitude, our hosts and their colleagues met this obligation in spades, over and again, during our months in Japan.)
But the trickier problem my gift had created was connected to sta- tus—that most explosive of Japanese minefields for the gaijin to maneu- ver. Howard explained that because my host was also my department chair, protocol dictated that he and his wife make a public display of giving more to us than we gave to them. Always. To call this “proto- col” would be a severe understatement. In Japan, protocol is not a del- icate suggestion. If it had a voice in Japanese, it would probably sound less like Emily Post than Tony Soprano banging at your door. In Japan, protocol demandsobedience.
Any favors my hosts received, uninvited or not, were expected to be repaid several times over. Our little bouquet, which was intended as a casual offering of goodwill, became their burden. It is revealing that the Japanese word for obligation, on,also means “a debt.”4(These debts are so frequent and compelling in Japanese society that there are secondhand gift stores to recycle the presents that are passed around.) We were one sorry group of guests. First we put our hosts through outrageous trouble to set us up in an apartment. Then, as our way of saying thank you, we toss them a hot potato that would cost them more to get out of their hands than they could probably afford. No wonder their predecessors closed Japan to water buffalo foreigners like my fam- ily for centuries.5
“Now,” Howard explained, “you have two choices. You can offer an old-fashioned American humble pie—bow down low and say ‘I’m not worthy’ a few times. They’ll bow lower. If you don’t move, it will end your exchange right there. Or . . .”—Howard broke into a big smile—“you could play dumb, generous gaijin—which you are, any- way—and up the ante with a few more rounds of gifts. In a few days, you could be millionaires.”
Howard was, of course, kidding with his last suggestion. (Weren’t you, Howard?) But, culturally speaking, he was absolutely correct. I’d set the stage for what could have been the biggest sale of my life. I con- trolled my hosts like marionettes on strings. Pull this cord and they’d relax. Tug on that one and they’re out the door buying me gifts. And the irony was that I—a guy who usually can’t control a dog—had worked this scheme without a hint of insight into what I was doing.
Such is the insidious potential of the reciprocity rule.