Reciprocation is ancient; it built our society. Anthropologists say reciprocity was how early tribes built trust; it meant survival. When someone gives us something today, that ancient wiring fires up, even if the context is a Lagos car park, not a tribal village.
In the early days, favours governed early trade when we exchanged grains for livestock. It also governs modern trades. Capitalism was built on the exchange of goods and services for money. Quid pro quo is so ingrained in us that even when someone does something for us, we mentally mark it as an incomplete transaction because we have not paid them back. The phrase, “I owe you a favour”, comes to mind. In Nigerian slang, we call that aura for aura. Someone wishes you a happy birthday, and you wish them back on their birthday. And if they don’t, you ignore them on theirs. Someone attends your party, you attend theirs. You scratch my back, I scratch yours.
The Rule of Reciprocity
These rules are taught to us from childhood. Society labels people who don’t pay back in kind as ingrates, stingy, and leeches. We’ve seen the social consequences of not paying back. But how does money come into the picture? It does, when people who seek to extract money out of us do us an unsolicited favour first, in hopes of making us think we owe them.
This rule is so powerful that when someone does us a favour and then comes back to request a favor of their own, we feel the need to say yes. Even if we wouldn’t have said yes to their request on a normal day. And even when we don’t like them or know them well. Think of who this can extend to: Salespeople, businesses, large corporations, strangers, con artists, or even friends and family members.
The implication of this is that whether people know about the rules of reciprocation or not, it can still be leveraged to get us to do things for them that serve their interests. Let’s look at a few examples.
No Pressure
A familiar example can be seen in Jehovah’s Witnesses, who, during their door-to-door home visits, often offer free copies of their Awake! or Watchtower magazines. Before leaving, they usually invite you to donate; many people feel an instinctive pull to reciprocate. Not because they were pressured, but because the free gift activated the social norm of returning kindness. This is not a criticism of their faith or mission; it is simply an observation of reciprocity in our everyday lives.
The Expensive Wedding
You have a close friend whom you’ve been friends with for years. Now she is getting married, and you are invited. It’s just one small hiccup; you have to buy her Aso-Ebi, and it costs ₦50,000.
Not just that, the wedding is taking place in her hometown in a different state, Enugu. You would have to take a flight down and book a hotel room at least three days before the wedding, because, of course, there will be a bridal shower the day before the wedding. So you had to have landed and settled the day before the bridal shower. By your calculations (clothes, tailor, makeup, flight, hotel, gifts), this whole wedding will cost you around ₦230,000, yet you have just ₦200,000 in your savings.
You don’t know what to do. Your friend has been there for you many times in the past, and you know that she is big on loyalty. You don’t know how to bring yourself to tell her that you can’t afford her wedding. Even if she tells you: Don’t worry about the aso ebi, just come as you are. You still can’t afford the flight and hotel. You wrestle with the idea of telling her you can’t afford to come at all, but how could you do that? She has lent you money multiple times in times of emergencies. You know she’d think that you don’t want to sacrifice something to be there for her on her day of joy.
Self-Betrayal
You’ve seen the way people act when friends don’t buy their aso-ebi or attend their wedding. Out of fear of her getting mad at you and cutting you off, you pony up and go for the wedding. When it’s done and you return home, you have exactly ₦0 left in savings, and a ₦30k debt.
That is the quiet power of reciprocity. You didn’t just spend ₦230,000; you paid for peace of mind, to keep your friendship balanced, and left yourself financially unstable in the process.
The Vendor Friend
Imagine you are getting married and you invite a friend to your wedding who happens to be a wedding planner and a small chops vendor. You love her energy, but you’ve already chosen a different vendor. Everything seems fine until that night, when you open WhatsApp and see this on her status:
Let me just say this once, if you have an event and you can’t even patronize your friends that run businesses, please don’t invite me o.
You’ll call me ‘friend,’ then go and book someone else for the same service I offer.
Then you’ll still have the audacity to send me aso-ebi and invite? 😂
I go all out for people o, but if you can’t even remember me when money is involved, abeg no disturb me again. Make everybody dey their lane.
A friend or that I thought is a friend just reached out to me now that her wedding is next month and cloth is available... I was even happy she needs ushers or snacks or event coordinator or something
She now said ..."ohhh I have given it out to an event planner"
So out of all the services I offer, you could not think of giving me one thing to do. Oshisco.
Confusion
You are confused. You think: Is she talking about me? Should I have just given her one thing to handle? Yes, she has shown support for you as a friend in non-monetary ways in the past, but you wonder if that means you owe her the contract of being your wedding vendor, even if you don’t like the aesthetic of her wedding decorations or her pricing. But of course, you couldn’t tell her that to her face. Does that make you a bad friend? Should I not have invited her? You ask. But you know deep down that would have angered her more. Her WhatsApp status probably would have gone:
Wow. So you had a whole wedding and didn’t even think to invite me? After everything? Even if you didn’t use my services, we were friends! So I didn’t even matter enough to be a guest?
So you’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
That’s the power of reciprocity, or rather, its shadow. It makes you question your boundaries. It turns someone else’s expectation into your obligation. People have many valid reasons for not choosing a friend’s business:
- budget differences
- Mismatch in style or quality
- Wanting to separate business from personal, so you can make corrections freely if you need to
- Family controls the vendor selection (mothers, mother-in-laws, etc).
- You chose another vendor friend
That is how reciprocity can be hijacked to guilt-trip and emotionally blackmail others into compliance.
Scammers
I had a friend who normally is a rational person. One time, we were hanging out, and she was scrolling through a particular website. She mentioned that the website was giving out free watches, and all you had to do was pay the delivery fee. My spidey senses tingled. I asked to see the picture of the watches. They looked expensive. Too expensive to be given away for free, even though I didn’t know much about watches. So I googled free watch scams, and the website’s name came up. Then came all the reviews from individuals and websites exposing the site as a scam.
Apparently, the scam was that the delivery fee was what they were aiming to get from you. Once you pay the $80 delivery fee, you’ve been scammed. By the way, $80 was enough to buy one or multiple brand-new watches elsewhere. So the scam site was banking on the victims being so grateful for the 4 free expensive-looking watches that they would be willing to pay the delivery fees, since it is the least you could do after getting free watches.
Hustlers
Murtala Muhammad International Airport is full of hustlers who might claim they want to help you with your heavy luggage or with directions if you are lost. But after they render their so-called help, they demand money from you.
Some even insist that they offered the “help” as a service, even though they never framed it as such when they first approached. Others claim they just want your appreciation. You might get irritated, but whether or not you agree, you somehow feel indebted to give them some money, no matter how small, just to get rid of them. It’s why foreigners are always so surprised at the airport when they receive unsolicited help and somehow get billed at the end of the transaction.
In Lagos car parks, the same thing happens. A hustler takes it upon himself to show you where the bus to your destination is, or a snack seller offers to show you where the public toilet is. But they plan to collect on that favour through a tip or a purchase. That is the burden of uninvited debt. Many city people, especially in places like Lagos, Ibadan, Port Harcourt, etc., have learned to be on guard in public and not accept unsolicited requests or even unsolicited conversations, especially in public places, because it can come with unexpected trouble or billing.
During election season in Nigeria, Nigerian politicians have been known to dole out cash, food, and clothing items as gifts to citizens. The implication here, of course, is that you feel indebted to vote for the candidate. That is the price of favours.
Free Samples
In supermarkets, sales reps use free samples of their products to get you to try them. The free sample might at times be given innocently to see if users like it. But let’s not forget that the sample is still a gift, and it can still trigger a subconscious urge for you to buy the product to close that indebtedness loop in your head. The free trials in consumer apps, the loyalty programs, or the cashback policies of businesses are all trying to achieve the same thing: instill loyalty and future repayment by buying.
A market seller who gives you jara to get you to come back. The restaurant’s complimentary bread and snacks. The maesuya who gives you one suya to taste. Think how awkward you’d feel if you tasted the suya and walked away. Whether the suya tasted good or not, you feel some kind of way about not buying.
A friend or family member who has done you a favor in the past is more likely to get money out of you if they try to borrow money from you in the future. Think about your financial advisor or business consultant who offers a complimentary portfolio resume review or a free strategy session on video call. But right after the call, they push you an expensive paid option they believe you will benefit from at the end of the meeting. You might feel indebted and compelled to pay for the psychological relief of not owing them.
Despise The Free Lunch
There’s no such thing as a free lunch
In Robert Greene’s classic, The 48 Laws of Power, the 40th law: despise the free lunch, speaks to this dynamic. A free lunch is often not free. Behind it is usually a trick or an obligation. People use it to get to your money, your time, and your loyalty. Think about how Trump threatens to withhold aid to certain countries if they refuse to do something he wants.
Always keep in mind that people use this tactic to exploit our greed, our preference for free stuff, bargains, and black Friday sales and discounts. They can use it to take advantage of us, get us to buy more, buy goodwill, and make us feel good.
They choose the form of the initial favour (which can be something we don’t even need or want); indebtedness is triggered, then they choose how they expect you to return the favor. When they ask for their own favor back, it’s often a larger favor than the one given to you. You either have to buy something from them, borrow or gift them money in return. These kinds of exploitative favors are a burden on us that we quickly want to remove.
What To Do
It’s important to see it for what it is in any social contract: a bargaining chip. Acknowledge your psychological nature but refuse the financial command.
We must pay closer attention when things are given free of charge or when we witness unbridled generosity. And we must scan for hidden obligations that may come with such gifts, whether from friends, families, or strangers. That’s not to say that all gifts are given with the intention to extract money from us. But we must be aware of our own tendencies and return favors only when we feel good about it, and not when we feel pressured or when it’s unaffordable for us.
Have you ever fallen victim to an exploitative favor? Let us know in the comments.