The Cost of Social Norms

An offer can mean different things depending on the relationship. Payment may turn a favor into a transaction, while a gift may express thanks without setting an explicit price. Ariely uses this distinction between social and market norms to explain why a small payment can sometimes discourage help.

He describes several studies:

• In a circle-dragging task, participants paid $5 dragged 159 circles; those paid $0.50 dragged 101; those paid nothing dragged 168. In this task, the unpaid social request prompted more effort than the small payment.
• A Snickers bar worth $0.50 or Godiva chocolates worth $5 prompted effort similar to no payment, around 168 circles. Explicitly naming the price, as in “a 50-cent Snickers”, shifted responses toward those observed with cash payments.
• At day-care centers, a fine for late pickups was followed by increased lateness. Lateness persisted after the fine was removed. Ariely interprets this as parents treating lateness as a service they could purchase rather than a breach of a social obligation.
• In a money-priming study, participants exposed to money-related scrambled sentences behaved more self-reliantly and offered less help.

The distinction also matters in families and workplaces. Offering cash for a home-cooked dinner may offend a host who sees it as an expression of care. A company that presents benefits as signs of mutual commitment creates expectations it may violate when it withdraws them. Neither example establishes that gifts always work better than money.

Ariely presents Burning Man’s emphasis on gifting as another illustration of exchange organized around social relationships. The point is to consider what an offer communicates: a price, a favor, gratitude or an obligation. Once an interaction is understood as a paid transaction, removing the payment may not restore the previous expectations.