United States, Relationships, Reciprocity

Logrolling

Logrolling is a North American word for trading favors, especially votes between legislators. In 1823 the Daily National Intelligencer said the image was “borrowed from the customs of the backwoodsmen,” who helped each other roll logs. It put the logic in one line: “Do you help me roll my log, and I’ll help you roll yours.”

In 1835 Congressman Davy Crockett wrote: “my people don’t like me to log-roll in their business, and vote away pre-emption rights to fellows in other states …” Crockett did not invent the word. Political uses date back to at least 1820.

The Hidden Review

In July 2014 Airbnb changed how guests and hosts review each other. From then on, reviews “will only be shown after both participants have completed their assessment of the experience.” The aim was to “promote more and more honest feedback.”

The researchers Andrey Fradkin, Elena Grewal and David Holtz tested the change in a field experiment on Airbnb. In Marketing Science in 2021, they reported that the change “reduced retaliation and reciprocation in feedback and led to lower ratings as a result.”

I’ll Refer You, You Refer Me

Under the American Bar Association’s Model Rule 7.2, a lawyer may agree with another lawyer or a nonlawyer professional to send each other clients. Two conditions apply. The “reciprocal referral agreement is not exclusive,” and “the client is informed of the existence and nature of the agreement.”

A comment to the rule adds that such an agreement “must not interfere with the lawyer’s professional judgment as to making referrals.” The same comment advises lawyers not to make these arrangements for an indefinite time.

Tit for Tat

The political scientist Robert Axelrod invited experts to submit computer programs that played a repeated game, the Prisoner’s Dilemma, in which each player chooses to cooperate or to betray. “I ran the fourteen entries and a random rule against each other in a round robin tournament,” he wrote.

The winner was a very simple strategy called “tit for tat,” sent in by Anatol Rapoport. In Axelrod’s words, it was “merely the strategy of starting with cooperation, and thereafter doing what the other player did on the previous move.” Axelrod published the results in 1980. His book The Evolution of Cooperation followed in 1984.

Christmas Cards to Strangers

In 1974 Phillip Kunz, a sociologist at Brigham Young University, picked 600 names at random from the phone book. He mailed the strangers Christmas cards. Many wrote back. Some replies were “three, four pages long.” Some people kept sending him cards for 15 years.

Reports of how many replied differ. A newspaper account says more than 200 of the 600. Time gives about 20 percent for studies published in 1976 and 2000.

In a study reported in 2015, the social psychologist Brian Meier repeated the test. He mailed hand-signed cards to 755 randomly chosen people. Only 2 percent replied. Meier called the result “unexpectedly low.”

Give First

Brad Feld co-founded Techstars, a startup accelerator that pairs founders with experienced mentors. In his book Give First (2025), he describes giving first as putting energy into a relationship or a system without first setting the terms of the exchange.

Feld says it should not be confused with altruism. “You can and should expect to get something back,” he says. “You just don’t know the way it will manifest.”

One Free Lunch

Since August 1, 2013, the Physician Payments Sunshine Act has required drug and device makers to report their payments to doctors. Food and drink count. Patients can search for their own doctor’s name.

In 2016 researchers at UC San Francisco used these records for 279,669 physicians. Ninety-five percent of the payments were meals, at an average cost of less than $20. Doctors who received just one meal were up to twice as likely to prescribe the promoted brand-name drug. Doctors who received several meals were up to three times as likely.

The authors warn that the data show a link. They do not prove that the meals caused the prescriptions.

Twenty Dollars a Source

A federal ethics rule tells executive-branch employees which gifts they may keep. An employee may accept unsolicited gifts worth “$20 or less per source per occasion.” Gifts from one source may not add up to more than $50 in a calendar year. The exception never covers cash.

The rule gives examples. A representative of a regulated entity offers an SEC employee and spouse two theater tickets at $30 each. “The employee may not accept the gift of the evening of entertainment.” The couple may go only if the employee pays the full $60. A speaker who receives a framed map worth $18 and a mug worth $15 “may accept the map or the mug, but not both.”

A Service for Me

The Godfather (1972) opens on the wedding day of Don Vito Corleone’s daughter. The undertaker Amerigo Bonasera begins with the words “I believe in America.” He asks the Don for justice for his daughter, and he offers to pay.

The Don complains that Bonasera never wanted his friendship and was afraid to be in his debt. When Bonasera offers to pay, the Don takes it as an insult. Only when Bonasera asks for his friendship does he agree to help. He calls it a gift on his daughter’s wedding day. But he adds that one day, a day that may never come, he may ask Bonasera to do him a service in return.

Nobody Nobody Sent

In 1948 Abner Mikva had just started law school. He walked into the 8th Ward Regular Democratic headquarters in Chicago to volunteer for Adlai Stevenson and Paul Douglas. The ward committeeman asked him, “Who sent you, kid?” Mikva said, “Well, nobody sent me.” The answer came back: “Well, we don’t want nobody nobody sent.”

Mikva later served in Congress and became a federal appeals judge. The same words became the title of Milton Rakove’s 1979 oral history of the Daley-era Chicago machine. In it, Jacob Arvey gives his advice for getting out the vote: “put people under obligation to you.”