Fundamental of human interaction: Type reciprocity

Reciprocity belongs to the fundamentals of human interaction. However, it is mostly identified as act reciprocity (“I scratch your back and you scratch mine”). We argue that there also is another kind of reciprocity - not related to acts but to character types (“I treat you nicely because I believe you are a nice person”). In the literature act and type reciprocity are often intermixed despite their fundamental differences. The former requires much bookkeeping and is prone to downward spirals when errors or mishaps occur. By contrast, type reciprocity reduces bookkeeping and potentially contributes to more stable cooperative and competitive relationships. However, so far it lacked direct investigation. In six experiments with economic games with a total of 679 participants and more than 60.000 choices, we found type reciprocity to be (a) very prominent, b) moderately “strong” (i.e. positive and negative), and (c) highly robust against disturbing influences (except in conflictful relationships).