Influence
Reciprocity
The sense of owing is the lever
Influence, chapter 2
Of the six principles he puts this one first. Why the side that gives first is the side holding the initiative.
What actually happened?
Cialdini states the rule plainly: we should try to repay, in kind, what another person has provided us. How deep does it go? In 1985 Ethiopia, in the middle of poverty, civil war and famine, sent five thousand dollars to earthquake victims in Mexico, because Mexico had sent aid when Ethiopia was invaded in 1935. The debt had held for fifty years. The other face of the rule is that it can be switched on. A flower, a can of Coke, a free sample, and the return regularly outruns the gift.
Being in debt does not require your consent
The strongest feature of reciprocity is that the favour can arrive uninvited and the obligation still forms. You did not ask for the small gift, and having taken it you find refusing the request hard. The initiative sits with whoever gives first.
A supplier insists on doing a free first draft. By the time you assess the others, the fact that they did it for nothing is already voting.
The return is usually out of proportion
The rule asks for repayment and says nothing about matching value, and people overpay to be rid of the feeling quickly. In Regan's experiment an unasked-for Coke produced raffle ticket purchases worth several times its price. The small favour is the cheapest lever here.
Solving a colleague's ten-minute problem buys more long-term cooperation than one large formal favour. Small enough to be awkward to ignore, light enough to settle.
The defence is to reclassify, not to refuse
Cialdini's counter is not to turn gifts down, which costs too much socially. It is to relabel: if the favour is a sales device then it is not a favour, and the rule stops applying. Favours are owed to favours, and tactics are owed nothing.
Take the sample, sit through the free seminar, then ask one question at decision time. With the gift removed, does this proposal still pass?
How do I use it today?
Where you are: you have taken something small from someone and are about to weigh their proposal.
Ask first: if that favour had never happened, what would you score this proposal?
Where it goes wrong: using reciprocity as bare purchase, which spends itself in one go; or keeping every kindness at the door so as never to owe anyone anything.
Lines to keep
There is no duty more indispensable than that of returning a kindness.
An uninvited favour still creates the debt.
Same situation, other people are asking
He says all the right things and I'm not sure I believe him.He talks well. I've never seen him deliver.She is the strongest candidate and the way she operates worries me.Three months of doing everything right. Is that enough to go on?Can I trust this person · all 7 questions →If this one named what you are going through,
send it to someone who needs it, or keep it somewhere you will find it again.