Self-centered social exchange: differential use of costs versus benefits in prosocial reciprocity

Maintaining equitable social relations often requires reciprocating "in kind" for others' prosocial favors. Such in-kind reciprocity requires assessing the value of a prosocial action, an assessment that can lead to egocentric biases in perceived value between favor givers versus favor receivers. In any prosocial exchange, 1 person (the giver) incurs a cost to provide a benefit for another person (the receiver). Six experiments suggest that givers may attend more to the costs they incur in performing a prosocial act than do receivers, who tend to focus relatively more on the benefits they receive. Givers may therefore expect to be reciprocated on the basis of the costs they incur, whereas receivers actually reciprocate primarily on the basis of the benefit they receive. This research identifies 1 challenge to maintaining a sense of equity in social relations and predicts when people are likely to feel fairly versus unfairly valued in their relationships.