Identity Shifts and Reciprocity Reversals
This raises a fundamental question: does a generalized giving system like Freecycle or the
Reciprocity Ring motivate takers to become better fakers, or can it actually turn takers into givers? In
some ways, I’d say the motives don’t matter: it’s the behavior itself that counts. If takers are acting in
ways that benefit others, even if the motives are primarily selfish rather than selfless or otherish,
they’re making contributions that sustain generalized giving as a form of exchange.
That said, if we ignore motives altogether, we overlook the risk that takers will decrease their
giving as soon as they’re out of the spotlight. In one study conducted by Chinese researchers, more
than three hundred bank tellers were considered for a promotion. The managers rated how frequently
each bank teller had engaged in giving behaviors like helping others with heavy workloads and
volunteering for tasks that weren’t required as part of their jobs. Based on giving behavior, the
managers promoted seventy of the bank tellers.
Over the next three months, the managers came to regret promoting more than half of the tellers.
Of the seventy tellers who were promoted, thirty-three were genuine givers: they sustained their
giving after the promotion. The other thirty-seven tellers declined rapidly in their giving. They were
fakers: in the three months before the promotion, they knew they were being watched, so they went out
of their way to help others. But after they got promoted, they reduced their giving by an average of 23
percent each.
What would it take to nudge people in the giving direction? When Harvard dean Thomas Dingman
saw that Harvard students valued compassion but thought others didn’t, he decided to do something
about it. For the first time in the university’s four centuries, Harvard freshmen were invited to sign a
pledge to serve society. The pledge concluded: “As we begin at Harvard, we commit to upholding the
values of the College and to making the entryway and Yard a place where all can thrive and where the
exercise of kindness holds a place on a par with intellectual attainment.”
Believing in the power of a public commitment, Dingman decided to go one step beyond inviting
students to sign the pledge. To encourage students to follow through, their signatures would be framed
in the hallways of campus dorms. A storm of objections quickly emerged, most notably from Harry
Lewis, a computer science professor and the former dean of Harvard College. “An appeal for
kindness is entirely appropriate,” Lewis responded. “I agree that the exercise of personal kindness in
this community is too often wanting,” he wrote on his blog, but “for Harvard to ‘invite’ people to
pledge to kindness is unwise, and sets a terrible precedent.”
Is Lewis right?
In a series of experiments led by NYU psychologist Peter Gollwitzer, people who went public
with their intentions to engage in an identity-relevant behavior were significantly less likely to engage
in the behavior than people who kept their intentions private. When people made their identity plans
known to others, they were able to claim the identity without actually following through on the
behavior. By signing the kindness pledge, Harvard students would be able to establish an image as
givers without needing to act like givers.
Dingman quickly dropped the idea of posting signatures publicly. But even then, evidence
suggests that privately signing a kindness pledge might backfire. In one experiment, Northwestern
University psychologists randomly assigned people to write about themselves using either giver terms