The $2 Fuse She Tried to Pay Me For
A woman in Kingfisher tried to pay me for a fuse I had replaced on her fan motor. It was a two-dollar fuse. I had been at the house fifteen minutes, and I told her there was no charge. She did not believe me. She tried to hand me a twenty. When I refused, she went to the kitchen and came back with a tin of homemade peanut brittle and pressed it into my hand. Well, she said, you have to take this then. That is the norm of reciprocity, one of the most universal rules in human societies. Alvin Gouldner wrote about it in 1960, and Robert Cialdini made it famous in 1984: people feel a deep…
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