Evidence, scope, and motives of reciprocity

In his Essay on the Gift (1924) – one of the most influential founding works of social science – Marcel Mauss calls reciprocity “one of the human rocks on which societies are built.” Reciprocity is treating others as they treat you, because of this very fact and not as the result of some agreed upon or expected exchange (this will be explained in detail). This basic, polymorphic and pervasive pattern of human social conduct is present in all social interactions and relations between individuals or groups that are neither overt violence nor based on threat of it, as the main fact or as a reciprocity of respect or attention that permits the other aspects of the relation. Nevertheless, reciprocity is not a primitive social fact; it results from some of three more fundamental ingredients – a duty of social balance or equity, the interaction of liking, and a mutuality of interests – which themselves result from a number of still more basic psychological elements. Of course, besides the reciprocity of favourable acts and sentiments – to which the tradition of social science restricts the concept of reciprocity –, there also is the negative reciprocation of revenge and retaliation for deterrence, which is only partially symmetrical to and does not have the fundamental role of (“positive”) reciprocity.

The existence, extent, importance and forms of reciprocity are in fact obvious.