title: Belief in reciprocity in a Chinese sample.
abstract: Belief in reciprocity refers to a personally internalized faith in the reciprocity norm: that people will return positive and negative interactions or favors in kind. The current study aims to examine the relationship between belief in reciprocity and altruism among a Chinese sample. The Personal Norm of Reciprocity Scale, Trait Forgiveness Scale, Prosocial Tendency Measure, and Altruism Scale were used to assess extent of belief in reciprocity, forgiveness, and prosocial motivation, respectively, among 204 Chinese undergraduates. The results indicated that belief in reciprocity was a partially negative, but not neutral, reciprocity norm for Chinese people. Specifically, belief in reciprocity was positively related to negative reciprocity, but not significantly related to positive reciprocity. Moreover, belief in reciprocity was negatively related to both prosocial tendency and altruistic motivation. The results also indicated that forgiveness largely mediated the effect of belief in reciprocity on altruism. Finally, the implications and limitations of the current study were discussed.
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Mental Health, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chaoyang District, Beijing City. zhangz@psych.ac.cn
authors.forename: Zhen
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Jianxin
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zhang
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000533:Altruism; D044466:Asian People / Q000523:psychology*; D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D003469:Culture; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007206:Individuality; D007389:Internal-External Control; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D028681:Moral Obligations; D009042:Motivation; D010865:Pilot Projects; D011594:Psychometrics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012919:Social Behavior; D012945:Social Values; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014175:Translating; D055815:Young Adult