The gift exchange model can be seen everywhere. In
particular, I see it quite often living with my three roommates. The model can
connect to the three main themes seen in these articles; altruism, fairness,
and sharing.
In
The Power of Altruism, the author
states that when we reward people for acts of kindness, they become less
inclined to do them. Because it becomes an economic transaction, they do not
feel as morally motivated to help. My
roommates and I are very close friends. We respect the duties of being a good
roommate and we also take care of each other. On occasion when we know one of
our roommates are busy and we are making dinner for ourselves we will offer to
cook for them. When we go to the grocery store we often will pick up items for
each other. We share our own supplies, medicine, clothes, and many items with
each other with nothing definite expected return. We know some roommates who
don’t share a single thing and are very independent even though they are all
close friends. Even though some of my roommates are more likely to act altruistically
than others, overall, we feel a sense of joy in being able to help each other
whether we receive anything in return or not.
I
enjoyed reading this article in particular. I wanted to briefly mentioned how
this article related to our class project. My group analyzed the Identify and Economics of Organizations by
Akerlof and Kranton. In this, the author states that forming an identity that resonates
with the goals of an organization makes people more motivated and therefore,
they put in higher levels of effort. This article described a similar situation
in which organizations are not capturing the motivations of individuals because
they believe people behave selfishly. Both of these tie sociological principles
into economic ones and introduce a perspective which I had not considered
before. In When a Child Thinks Life is Unfair, the author discusses how children expect everything to be fair. This can be seen when one of my roommates throws a party or cooks dinner with her friends. As in the gift exchange model, there is a minimum performance standard and a higher performance norm. If they throw a party, the minimum performance would be that they throw cups and trash away. They may get away with this if there is going to be another party the next day. Then there is a performance norm in which they throw cups away, mop the floors, and put the furniture back in place. In return, the other roommates give the gift of time. If this is the first time that this has happened and it takes them a day or two to clean it up, we are usually pretty patient. But if the apartment is constantly being trashed and they always take several days to clean it, then issues arise. When both parties don’t take advantage of each other and are reasonable, things tend to be more positive and cohesive.
From another perspective, sometimes a roommate would throw a party and then go out of town for the weekend. Though it is not fair to the others, we would have to clean it up to keep the apartment hygienic. If this began to happen quite often, as seen in the gift exchange model, those of us who did not throw the party would clean but then the roommate whose job it was to clean would do it for us the following time.
In the final article, How to get Rich to Share the Marbles, the author describes an experiment in which children work together to pull a rope, pull two separate ropes or do no work. In each condition, the outcome is that the children each receive a different number of marbles and they observed if the children were willing to share marbles based on the condition in which they attained them. For my roommates and I, this relates to how we keep our kitchen clean. We work as a team to keep it clean. We have a system in which everyone must rinse their own dishes and put them in the dishwasher. On a rotation, once the dishwasher is almost full, whoever’s turn it is must put any dishes that got left behind in there, run the dishwasher, put them away when they are clean, and wash the sink. This captures the key concept of reciprocity as seen in the gift exchange model. We expect each other to scrub the dishes and put them in neatly to eliminate extra work for others. The person on rotation is expected to unload the dishwasher promptly after the dishes are clean otherwise they begin to pile up again in the sink. In this sense, we are expected to reciprocate the other’s duty once we rotate and thus we share the burden of maintaining this system for the cleanliness of our home.
References
Brooks,
David, The Power of Altruism, The New
York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/08/opinion/the-power-of-altruism.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region®ion=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region&_r=0
Haidt,
Jonathan, How to Get the Rich to Share
the Marbles, The New York Times, https://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/20/how-to-get-the-rich-to-share-the-marbles/?ref=opinion
When
a Child Thinks Life is Unfair, The New York Times, https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/07/05/when-a-child-thinks-life-is-unfair-use-game-theory/?contentCollection=smarter-living&hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
It's odd how your piece went from single space to double space. I wonder why that happened.
ReplyDeleteI would quibble a tiny bit with the first sentence of your second paragraph. Of course, there is a reward from being altruistic in an environment where your roommates do likewise. You enjoy each other's company and that enjoyment is the reward, the altruistic behavior might then be viewed as a way to keep the good thing going. A more narrow interpretation of the word reward is needed to make that sentence correct. That would be ward as quid pro quo, an explicit payment in return for a service. It's having a quid pro quo that would limit the friendship.
I am glad that you connected these ideas to Akerlof and Kranton, because they are essentially the same thing but framed in somewhat different ways. The question then is who becomes an insider and who remains and outsider. (On sharing clothes, it may amuse you that I wear some hand me downs from my son, but not vice versa.) Sometimes I feel that we as society should draw our circles larger so that more people count as insiders. It would go a long way to curing what ails us now. Do you think that is possible, just for you and your friends vis-a-vis other students who live elsewhere?
I didn't understand the party example, especially as how it related to what you said earlier. Does one roommate invite friends who are not otherwise friends of the others in the apartment? I would think, given what you wrote earlier, that a party would be jointly hosted by several of the roommates.
Finally, let me note that it quite a long time since I was an undergrad, but trying to recall how I was then, I would be hard pressed by the obligations the way you have it set up and might try to compensate for my sloth in other dimensions - perhaps going shopping for the group or something like that. Gift exchange and equal division of labor on a task by task basis seem to me to be somewhat at odds with other. If it works for you, that's great. I'm not sure that would work for me.
Hello,
DeleteI do think that it is possible. In fact, I believe that it is important in order to create a more cohesive environment and benefit society as a whole. As far as the party example goes, on occasion they would invite their friends from organizations they are a part of or friends from their class so we would not always know them. We also host them together. Our system can be a bit tedious but as this is our second year living together, we all appreciate it in the long run.
I thought your example of roommates was an interesting example and I had not thought of that. I have not been extremely close to my roommates previously so this is probably why. It seems you are close friends with your roommates and this is why reciprocation is present and the gift exchange model occurs. It's critical that you guys care about one another and are invested in each others well being. This makes it possible for the gift exchange model to flourish.
ReplyDeleteYour situation is different from mine. My roommates and I all shop and cook separately, but we do clean the apartment in turns. I don't know thought if I did room with friends, if we would buy and cook food for each other. I think this could work with fewer roommates, but I feel like the more people you add the likelihood a group is divided increases. By this I mean that, some roommates might be closer to others and it could cause conflict between each other if someone does not receive the same treatment as other roommates.
In terms of the cleaning system, I think this works better in theory. No one wants to clean the dirty dishes of someone else and because of this, if someone leaves their dishes for a few days the dishes will pile up. This could create frustration if it reaccures frequently. I know this from personal experience unfortunately.