"It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas..."

Well, even though the temperature outside is hovering around 50 degrees, it is indeed beginning to look a lot like Christmas, at least at the Wheeler house.  We started putting up our holiday decorations right before Thanksgiving, and we finished putting up our outdoor Christmas lights just this morning.  One last holiday tradition remains - Christmas greeting cards!  I have to admit, even though it is a lot of work addressing envelopes and signing all of our Christmas cards, I do enjoy hearing from old friends every year when we receive their Christmas cards in the mail.  We have made many connections over the years, and the annual Christmas card is frequently the one time every year when we renew these connections.

One of the questions my wife and I ask ourselves, just about every year, is who we are going to include on our Christmas card list.  We usually send out quite a few cards every year, but one of the key factors is whether we received a Christmas card from someone the prior year.  In other words, if we received a Christmas card from your family last year, there is almost a 100% certainty we will be including your family on our list of Christmas cards to send out this year. Surprisingly enough, psychologists have a name for this phenomenon - it's called the norm of reciprocity.

Two psychologists, Phillip Kunz and Michael Woolcott actually studied the norm of reciprocity using Christmas cards back in 1976.  The study is actually quite interesting.  Kunz and Woolcott randomly (more or less) selected 576 names from a Chicago city directory - all complete strangers - and mailed them a Christmas greeting card.  The two investigators varied the content and type of card, as well as the sender of the card.  For example, high-quality cards usually had a poetry inscription or winter scene and were printed on high-gloss paper, while low-quality cards were plain, white cardstock with a Christmas message written in red ink.  Some of the cards were "sent" from a "Dr. and Mrs. Kunz" (high-prestige), while others were signed simply "Phil and Joyce" (low-prestige).  Each card had a return address that was clearly marked.  Regardless of who sent the card or whether the card was high- versus low-quality, 117 of the recipients sent a response back to the two investigators.  In other words, nearly 20% of the recipients returned a Christmas card or note back to a complete stranger!  Some of the responses inquired how the recipients were acquainted with the senders, while others wrote back lengthy responses telling all about their family and what was going on in their lives!

As it turns out, recipients were more likely to send back a response if the card was high-quality or the sender was high-prestige.  I suspect that some people were likely too embarrassed to ask how they knew the sender and felt obligated to return the gesture.  Moreover, some recipients likely saw some utility in "keeping on the good side" of the high-prestige sender.  What matters most, I think, is the simple fact that so many recipients did actually respond. 

Type "norm of reciprocity" into Google and you will likely find examples and suggestions on how you can use the "norm of reciprocity" to your benefit - say in a negotiation, as one example (think "quid pro quo" or "you scratch my back, I scratch your back").  I agree there is merit in learning about the "norm of reciprocity" - however, in this holiday season, perhaps when our world most needs it, I am reminded of the simple lesson that there is something uniquely special and reassuring in our human nature that feels some sort of obligation to return a simple act of kindness.  As Aesop said, "no act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted."  Let us all remember the "norm of reciprocity" this holiday season and beyond.