User:Kcardos2/Reciprocity (social psychology)

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Reciprocity and Trust

Trust in reciprocity takes into consideration three different factors: the individual’s risk preferences (whether or not the person has a tendency to accept risks in trust decisions), their social preferences (whether the individual shows prosocial tendencies or betrayal aversion), and lastly, their beliefs about the other’s trustworthiness (includes social priors like implicit racial attitudes and the reputation of the other individual based on previous experiences. A coordinated meta-analysis of 30 fMRI studies has concluded that trust in reciprocity might cause an aversive feeling at the beginning of a series of interactions with a stranger because of the uncertainty of the decision outcome, which means that individuals are not sure if the other person will reciprocate their actions. However, as interpersonal trust grows people are more confident and willing to cooperate with their partners. Interpersonal trust builds up through a learning mechanism that takes information from previous interactions in which the other individual cooperated or did not cooperate. This learning mechanism helps the individual label the other person as trustworthy or untrustworthy. This meta-analysis also found that reciprocity, trust, and feedback learning show activity in different areas of the brain, which suggests that all of them are part of different cognitive processes. This theme of reciprocity and trust is also discussed in science magazines like in the Greater Good Magazine where the writers mention that people are more likely to be cooperative with others who act cooperatively towards them or have a reputation of being cooperative.

Negative Reciprocity in the Workplace

According to reciprocity, harmful behavior also tends to be reciprocated with harmful behavior. A meta-analysis analyzed negative workplace behaviors, which range from bullying and harassment to counterproductive work behavior, by separating them into different categories according to severity (describing the amount of harm: minor, moderate, severe), activity (describing the harm that comes from the withdrawal of positive behaviors: passive, balanced, active), and target (whether the behavior was reciprocated or displaced to another person). The analysis found that negative behaviors tend to be reciprocated with the same kind of behavior and the strongest relationship was found in reciprocity using a matched level of severity and activity; however, negative workplace behaviors that escalate in severity or activity also showed a strong and positive relationship. Moreover, when the frequency of negative workplace behaviors increases this is reciprocated by the other person also increasing the frequency of their negative behaviors. The weakest effect was found to be de-escalation in activity or severity, which means that most people tended to respond with the same or a greater amount of reciprocity in negative workplace behaviors. In the category of severity, de-escalation only took place when Party A was engaging in severe behaviors like violence or harassment, in Party B engages in moderately severe behavior, which could be a result of not wanting to cross the line of ethical norms and legal repercussions as a consequence of the behaviors. Many of the articles analyzed did not include the target of the negative behaviors; this is why their information on this category was limited. However, they found that for two cases of de-escalation, the reciprocated negative behavior was directed at the instigator instead of being displaced. There was also one case of escalation in which the reciprocated behavior was targeting the instigator. A news article summarizing research studies suggests that negative reciprocity might exist in order to restore or build a cooperative relationship. They stated that it is a strategy that has balance as a goal, especially because it involves a relatively proportional response to harm.

Self-serving Reciprocity

Reciprocity has been previously documented as automatic because it requires less cognitive control than other self-serving behaviors. The researchers of a series of experiments around this topic wanted to investigate whether this automatic reciprocity existed as a motivation to be fair and reciprocal or whether it is a result of wanting to look like a fair person. To test this they used a two-player activity called the trust game or the investment game. Participants were given a determined amount of chips/money, the sender is supposed to decide the amount of money/chips (all, some, none) they want to transfer to the trustee or whether they want to keep the money/chips for themselves. The experimenter triples, in this case, doubles, the amount transferred from the sender and gives it to the trustee, then the trustee decides whether or not to transfer (all, some, none) back. This series of experiments added a condition where the trustees are informed that their chips are worth twice as much as the sender’s chips, which gives them the option to appear fair and another option to be genuinely fair. They also divided the groups manipulating the participant’s cognitive control. Researchers replicated the finding showing that people tend to turn to reciprocal behavior when there is a lack of cognitive control due to ego depletion. They also showed that when participants had limited cognitive control, they used the extra information to positively reciprocate to a lesser extent than people without the cognitive control manipulation; however, even with reduced cognitive control, they chose to benefit from the exchange if the outward perception of their behavior would look fair and reciprocal, showing that their main goal was to appear fair, it was not to behave in a fair manner. A news article summarized a research study that supports these findings in which researchers found that people tend to take more time to make a generous choice than to make a selfish one.

Reciprocity in Non-Human Primates

The topic of reciprocity in non-human primates has been a field with a lot of research contradictions and opposite findings; however, in a recent meta-analysis, the researchers concluded that primates have the cognitive and social prerequisites needed to use reciprocity. They evaluated previous findings and found that there are more positive than negative findings. They added that reciprocity could have been misrepresented in some research studies because it also includes helps between relatives and trading. Researchers also identified that many of the negative findings come from articles where researchers did not measure the primate’s understanding of the task or studies where the primates did not show an understanding of the activity. The authors also state that previous researchers saw the studies that did not show reciprocity as a failure to prove reciprocity instead of looking at the situations where reciprocity was involved versus the situations where it was not used. Different species also take different time periods to reciprocate an action, it might be short or long-term. Some specific behaviors also seem less likely to be reciprocated. For example, it is less likely for a non-human primate to reciprocate food donations. Overall, the researchers concluded that non-human primate reciprocity is more common than it seems to be and that negative findings should not be thrown out but used for a better comprehension of their use of reciprocity. News sources also support these findings suggesting that other primates use reciprocity in food sharing and other domains; and some of them, like chimpanzees, are more likely to do so if the other chimpanzee had also helped them in the past, which also supports the connection between trust and reciprocity in non-human primates.