Personal trust deepens only through graduated, reciprocated small favours

Evidence

A personal relationship on the basis of mutual favours usually opens with small-scale activities. Kindnesses, offers of help, and small gifts which cost nothing are proffered in a form which leaves room for tactful rejection. The relationship can only be deepened when acts of friendship have been reciprocated, when there is a spark of grateful recognition, and when the relationship has stood the test of everyday coming and going. It can then involve larger gifts, and, because each person trusts the other, can sustain a long, drawn-out imbalance. At this stage of development, immediate and exactly gauged reciprocation becomes a sign of distrust, because the person acting in this way presents himself as someone wanting to extricate himself as soon as possible from the bonds of gratitude. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 201

Categorization

• XREF: Directly parallels face-to-face relationship-building that Giddens calls ‘facework commitment’ — the small-scale, reciprocated trust that Stevens foregoes in favor of institutional deference. Also resonates with the graduated testing in Milgrom’s law-merchant reputation systems.
• SHARE: The point that immediate exact reciprocation signals distrust — wanting to escape the ‘bonds of gratitude’ — is a counterintuitive social-psychology nugget worth sending to a behavioral-economics friend.