On Doing Favours… Do They Fade Over Time?
If I scratch your back, you’ll scratch mine, right? But does the power of a favour already done get stronger or weaker over time?
Favours drive the world. We do favours all the time. We answer questions, we help friends move, we lend our stapler to our officemate.
Imagine you’ve just been invited over to a friend's house for a wonderful meal. You leave later that evening promising to repay the favour at your place sometime. Do your feelings about repaying that delicious debt get stronger or weaker as the weeks pass?
The social norm of reciprocity is at play here. People tend to respond to behaviours in-kind - like doing a similar favour in return, or, in the case of negative actions, payback.
But we also know that other biases are at play regarding how we perceived or valued the favour done for us.
For example, only the favour-doer deeply knows the effort it took to complete the ask, the asker only sees the end result. Plus there are all kinds of memory biases as time passes. For example, ego-centric bias has us looking backwards in a self-serving manner, and might have us thinking “oh that dinner wasn’t such a big deal” so that we can ease our sense of personal obligation.
But what does the Science say?
When You’ve Done a Favour: Ask Earlier Than Later
Researchers have found that the value of a favour decreases in the minds of the recipient over time. A favour is perceived as most valuable right after it has been performed and seems to go on a steady decline thereafter. This could be because when looking back, our memories play little tricks on us saying how we didn’t really need that much help, and the bind we were in at the time wasn’t all that serious (downplaying the value of the favour). The moral of this story is to make sure you ask for your own favour in return early!
When You’ve Received a Favour: Make an Offer to Do a Favour Back Early
Research has found that people who perform a favour value it’s worth more and more as time goes on. This is probably not a good thing now that we know the favour-receivers tend to devalue the value of the favour as time goes by. The solution? Offer to repay the favour early, and if that’s not possible, don’t downplay the favour as time goes by (otherwise it might put strain on your relationship).
Got something from this article? (i.e., Me doing YOU a favour). Great! Please like and share! (You doing ME a favour!)
Love,
