Eileen Fung ‘17Special Studies with

Simon HallidayDepartment of Economics,

Smith College

Reciprocal Inclinations of Smithies and Their

Implications

Reciprocal Inclinations: What is it?

Reciprocity can be defined as: a behavioral response to perceived kindness and unkindness (Falk and Fischbacher, 2006); it consists of positive and negative aspects.

Positive reciprocity is the response to kindness with kindness in turn, e.g. If you help me, I will help you in return.

Negative reciprocity is the retaliatory aspect of returning hostile actions with hostility, e.g. If you hurt my feelings, I will hurt yours.

What is this research about?

This research is based on Dohmen et al.’s 2009 study, and aims to measure the reciprocal inclination of Smith students (positive or negative) in conjunction with their trust levels and GPA.

We hope to find a relationship between these three variables, as well as certain personal characteristics to connect them with more practical measures

e.g. implications on how responsive students may be to policy changes at Smith.

The research is preliminary as we used few variables and are constrained by our sample size

Related Literature and Research

Dohmen et al. (2009) found that:Positive reciprocal

inclinations predict: higher work effort,lower unemployment, and higher subjective

well-beingBeing more negatively

inclined is correlated with:a higher frequency of

unemployment and lower levels of

happiness.

Principal-Agent Relationship

Falk & Kosfeld (2006) and Ziegelmayer et al (2012) build on Deci (1971) and Frey (2003) arguing for the role of reciprocity in principal-agent relationships

Too much control and the use of incentives may crowd out reciprocal preferences to exert effort in employment relationships

A Continuation…

Montizaan et al. (2013) studied the effects of the introduction of a new pension system, and found that:Negative reciprocity

reduces job motivation significantly in all their participants

This provides evidence that reciprocal inclinations play a role in how workers respond to policy changes in the work place.

The Importance of GPAJones and Jackson (1990) found that

an increase in annual earnings of 8.9% accompanied a one-point rise in GPA.

Wise (1975) proposed: academic achievement is an important

determinant of job performanceaverage rate of increase in salary is

estimated to be 0.045 and continues to rise consistently with the participant’s grades and college selectivity

Since reciprocal inclinations are correlated with job performance, and so is GPA, we are interested in how the two variables correlate in our research.

MethodSurveyed 77 Smith College students who

were in their junior or senior year. Survey consisted of:

6 questions developed by Perugini et al. (2003) measuring positive and negative reciprocity,

5 questions measuring respondents’ trust levels

3 questions that asked about participants’ average hours of work per week, volunteer activities, and school involvement (i.e. extracurriculars).

Method ContinuedThrough the Smith College Office of

Institutional Research, we were able to obtain respondents‘:GPAClass year (either junior or senior status)Under-represented minorityAsian-AmericanInternational student First generation student

All used in our regression analysis to try to understand GPA.

Preliminary Findings

Out of the 76 respondents (77 surveyed, 1 dropped because of related privacy issues):70.12% do not participate in volunteer activities

99.81% participate in at least one extracurricular activity

The average amount of hours they typically work in a week is 3.63 (sd. 2.18)

Preliminary Findings

Result 1: Smith students in our sample are more positively reciprocal than population averages. The sample is more positively reciprocal than

negatively reciprocal. Result 2: Our sample shows greater levels of trust when compared with the results from the World Values Survey. Average trust levels for one of our questions is

0.66, while the WVS question has an average of 0.38; the two are unequal at the 1% level of significance using a one-sample t test.

“I go out of my way to help somebody who has been kind to me before.”

1 = Does not apply at all7 = Applies perfectly

“If somebody puts me in a difficult position, I will do the same to him/her.”

1 = Does not apply at all7 = Applies perfectly

Simple average responses to the three positively reciprocal questions; 1=does not apply at all, 7=applies perfectly

Positive Reciprocity

Negative Reciprocity

Simple average of responses to the three negatively reciprocal questions; 1=does not apply at all; 7=applies perfectly

Regression AnalysisBased on Dohmen et al., our regression models are:

Reciprocityi = β1SCi+ β2Trusti + β3Xi+ESC, Trust, and “X,” refer respectively to the individual’s social

capital, trust level, their vector of demographic characteristics such as being an international student, first generation, race/ethnicity

calculates the relationship between the independent variables of Social Capital, Trust, and the vector of demographic characteristics, “X,” with the dependent variable of the individual’s reciprocity levels.

GPAi = β1PRi + β2NRi + β3Xi +EPR and NR refer respectively to the individual’s positively

reciprocal levels, and negatively reciprocal levels.Calculates the relationship between the independent variables

of positive reciprocity, negative reciprocity, and the individual’s demographic characteristics with the dependent variable of their grade point average (GPA)

We also broke down GPA into three categories: high = 3.5-4.0; medium = 3.0-3.49; low = below 3.0.

Regression ResultsResult 3: There were correlations

between a student’s GPA and volunteering, suggesting a role for social capital.There was a positively statistically significant

relationship between volunteering and GPA (β = 0.209, p < 0.05).

The evidence suggests social capital positively correlates with labor market outcomes, so we might expect this correlation

But, the correlation may measure effects to do with achievement and incentives, i.e. students who hope to obtain better job market outcomes might rationally choose to volunteer, anticipating its effects on employment opportunities

  (1) (2) (3)

VARIABLES GPA (1) GPA (2) GPA (3)Positive Reciprocity -0.00997 -0.0163 -0.0196

(0.0639) (0.0623) (0.0566)Negative Reciprocity -0.0297 -0.0423 -0.0395

(0.0443) (0.0449) (0.0418)Trust (standardized) 0.0324 0.0435 0.0339

(0.0399) (0.0368) (0.0372)Trust Question 4 0.0867 0.0660 0.0750

(0.102) (0.106) (0.106)Trust Question 5 -0.0538 -0.0441 -0.0638

(0.0954) (0.0901) (0.0922)First Generation -0.141 -0.171

(0.111) (0.105)Volunteer (dummy) 0.209**

(0.0893)Constant 3.499*** 3.612*** 3.569***

(0.414) (0.409) (0.376)Observations 76 76 76R-squared 0.028 0.183 0.244Robust standard errors in parentheses

*** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, *p<0.1

Fin.Thank you!