Several hypotheses have been proposed to explain the evolution of altruistic behaviours. Their relative roles in explaining actual cases of animal altruism are, however, unclear. In particular, while kin selection is widely believed to have a pervasive influence on animal behaviour, reciprocity is generally thought to be rare. Despite this general agreement, there has been no direct test compar...

Unlike economic exchange, social exchange has no well-defined "value." It is based on the norm of reciprocity, in which giving and taking are to be repaid in equivalent measure. Although giving and taking are colloquially assumed to be equivalent actions, we demonstrate that they produce different patterns of reciprocity. In five experiments utilizing a dictator game, people reciprocated in lik...

Taking a structuration perspective while integrating reciprocity research in economics, this study examines the dynamics of reciprocal interactions in social Q&A communities. We postulate that individual users of social Q&A constantly adjust their kindness into the direction of the observed benefit and effort of others. Collective reciprocity emerges from this pattern of conditional strategy of...

The prevalence of reciprocal cooperation in non-human animals is hotly debated [1, 2]. Part of this dispute rests on the assumption that reciprocity means paying like with like [3]. However, exchanges between social partners may involve different commodities and services. Hitherto, there is no experimental evidence that animals other than primates exchange different commodities among conspecifi...

This article deals with the reciprocity of social support in personal relationships and with its connection to well-being, particularly loneliness. After reviewing briefly the concept of reciprocity, w'e develop four methods for constructing indices of the reciprocity of social support based on data on ego-centered networks of personal relationships. The four indices showed that on the average,...

We examined the relationship between organizational identification and unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB)-unethical behaviors conducted by employees to potentially benefit the organization. We predicted that organizational identification would be positively related to UPB and that positive reciprocity beliefs would moderate and strengthen this relationship. The results from 2 field stu...

The complexity of humans' cooperative behavior cannot be fully explained by theories of kin selection and group selection. If reciprocal altruism is to provide an explanation for altruistic behavior, it would have to depart from direct reciprocity, which requires dyads of individuals to interact repeatedly. For indirect reciprocity to rationalize cooperation among genetically unrelated or even ...

For more than a century researchers have been reporting that the visual impact of a very brief flash is determined by the quantity of photons that the flash delivers. This has been variously described as the Bunsen-Roscoe Law or Bloch's Law, often specified as reciprocity of intensity × duration. Prior research found no evidence for such reciprocity when microsecond-duration flashes from a ligh...

Current work on cooperation is focused on the theory of reciprocal altruism. However, reciprocity is just one way of getting a return on an investment in altruism and is di¤cult to apply to many examples. Reciprocity theory addresses how animals respond dynamically to others so as to cooperate without being exploited. I discuss how introducing di¡erences in individual generosity together with p...

Cooperation by generalised reciprocity implies that individuals apply the decision rule "help anyone if helped by someone". This mechanism has been shown to generate evolutionarily stable levels of cooperation, but as yet it is unclear how widely this cooperation mechanism is applied among animals. Dogs (Canis familiaris) are highly social animals with considerable cognitive potential and the a...