The hidden cost of receiving favors: A theory of indebtedness

Abstract

Receiving help or a favor from another person can sometimes have a hidden cost. In this study, we explore these hidden costs by developing and validating a theoretical model of indebtedness across three studies that combine large-scale experience sampling, interpersonal games, computational modeling, and neuroimaging. Our model captures how individuals infer the altruistic and strategic motivations of the benefactor. These inferences produce distinct feelings of guilt and obligation that together comprise indebtedness and motivate reciprocity. Altruistic intentions convey feelings of care and concern and are associated with activity in the insula, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and default mode network, while strategic intentions convey expectations of future reciprocity and are associated with activation in the temporal parietal junction and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex. We further develop a neural utility model of indebtedness using multivariate patterns of brain activity that captures the tradeoff between these feelings and reliably predicts reciprocity behavior.

Would you mind sharing your story? A narrative exploration of incivility experiences in the Information Technology workplace

“…In Asian culture, precisely concerning the multi-cultural Indian context, the tendency to reciprocate favours had further fostered the investigation of the key role of culture in individuals' feelings for such obligations. Adding to attempts of such exploration by Gao et al (2020), current findings offered a compiled view of both from a narrative perspective that significantly enhances the incivility concept's theoretical and cultural roots. Nevertheless, other quantitative and mixed-method approach-based studies are warranted to investigate the alluring questions at stake.…”

Gratitude is morally sensitive

“…Chinese counterpart (ren-qing zhai, literally meaning "debt of human feelings/relationships"; cf. (Cheung et al, 1996;Gao et al, 2021;Yan, 1996)) that we used in the Chinese questionnaire referred to slightly different facets of social and emotional experience. As for perceived effort, the cultural difference was unlikely due to the differences in the vignettes because in all the vignettes the Helper explicitly stated that the help was effortless for them.…”

“…One potential response of Recipients then might be to experience indebtedness and uneasiness rather than gratitude (Gao et al, 2021). However, in close relationship context, or other situations where the Recipient is certain that a Helper's extremely self-sacrificial behaviors are not driven by strategic motives, extreme acts may lead to enhanced gratitude.…”

Neural Responses of Benefiting From the Prosocial Exchange: The Effect of Helping Behavior

“…Third, given the association of positive affect and altruism, we tested whether brain responses underlying received prosocial behavior were associated with positive affect. Based on previous literature, we anticipate that practical help will elicit greater activation of the ToM and DMN networks (Mizuguchi et al, 2016;Gao et al, 2020) for their role in mediating the direct costs of social interaction and indebtedness. On the other hand, effort appreciation, which entails social approval for the self, is expected to be associated with a prefrontal-cingulate network along with brain regions involved in visual perception as suggested by previous studies on social reward (Achterberg et al, 2016;Makowski et al, 2016).…”

“…Additionally, the default mode network (DMN), which is supposed to mediate self-referential processes such as autobiographical navigation, daydreaming, or emotional introspection ( Raichle et al, 2001 ), has been implicated in the other-referential thinking and social behavior ( Andrews-Hanna, 2012 ; Mars et al, 2012 ). Indeed, a very recent study on indebtedness found the engagement of a network encompassing the Theory of Mind (i.e., DMPFC and TPJ) as well as the DMN during an interactive game with different conditions of reciprocity ( Gao et al, 2020 ). Furthermore, different regions of sensory motor and DMN may be recruited in processing comments on the self.…”