Reciprocity (Social Psychology)
Published on September 9, 2014
Published on Wealthy Affiliate — a platform for building real online businesses with modern training and AI.
From Wikipedia: Reciprocity, in Social Psychology, refers to responding to a positive action with another positive action and rewarding kind actions. As a social construct, reciprocity means that in response to friendly actions, people are frequently much nicer and much more cooperative than predicted by the self-interest model.
When somebody does something decent for you, and you do something pleasant once more to them, you call that "furnishing a proportional payback."
The reality of the situation is I like helping individuals. It makes me feel great to give. I don't do the deed and expect to get anything back.
ARE YOU ASKING FOR A FAVOR?!
When someone asks for a favor, don't think about what you're going to get out of the deal. As for the person doing the asking...do the right thing without ever second-guessing the payback! I know a lot of you mean to reciprocate and you even tell us you will but the reality is you either never intended to do so or you found other favors to ask and just "forgot." People don't forget...it's like asking to borrow money. I loan money with the expectation of never getting it back...that's the truth.
Ready to put this into action?
Start your free journey today — no credit card required.
THE CONTRACT
One person asks for help and another one performs the act. In a sense, this is now a contract. Do you really think you build trust with someone that didn't complete his/her part of the deal? We grow our businesses based on a lot of feedback AND COMMENTS. It helps having other sets of eyes show you something you may have overlooked. And you feel good when you hear about a great website you've built...so start sharing and caring for others and all of us will succeed together!
We are all committed to supporting one another. Heck, that's one of many reasons I decided to go Premium. I remember Boffy, Maksim, Labman, Apache1, etc. If I didn't mention your name that's because I don't have all the hundreds of names memorized and I am sorry!
It appears the more you help individuals, the more individuals need to help you. It's free will, I assume, to need to respond. Regardless, the best motivation to do this, is to be liberal with your abilities and information, based on the grounds that THE GIVING IS THE BLESSING!
From a youthful age, I was taught to return favors nonchalantly. I certainly didn't want others to speak bad about me or my upbringing.
DO THE FAVOR WITH THE DESIRE OF IMPACTING LIVES
You can't help everybody...not on the off-chance that you set out to have any kind of effect in individuals' lives. That is the mentality one must adhere to...doing favors with the desire of impacting lives.
Help as many people as you can and don't expect anything in return. Also, you can't help everybody so learn to pick your battles cautiously.
Share this insight
This conversation is happening inside the community.
Join free to continue it.The Internet Changed. Now It Is Time to Build Differently.
If this article resonated, the next step is learning how to apply it. Inside Wealthy Affiliate, we break this down into practical steps you can use to build a real online business.
No credit card. Instant access.