1. Eileen Fung ‘17
Special Studies with
Simon Halliday
Department of Economics,
Smith College
Reciprocal Inclinations of
Smithies and Their Implications

2. 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

3. 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

4. Related Literature and
Research
 Dohmen et al. (2009)
found that:
 Positive reciprocal
inclinations predict:
 higher work effort,
 lower unemployment,
 and higher subjective well-
being
 Being more negatively
inclined is correlated
with:
 a higher frequency of
unemployment
 and lower levels of

5. 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

6. 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.

7. The Importance of
GPA
 Jones 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
performance
 average 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

8. Method
 Surveyed 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

9. Method Continued
 Through the Smith College Office of
Institutional Research, we were able to
obtain respondents‘:
 GPA
 Class year (either junior or senior status)
 Under-represented minority
 Asian-American
 International student
 First generation student
 All used in our regression analysis to try
to understand GPA.

10. 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

11. 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.

12. “I go out of my way to help somebody who has
been kind to me before.”
1 = Does not apply at
all
7 = Applies perfectly

13. “If somebody puts me in a difficult position, I
will do the same to him/her.”
1 = Does not apply at
all
7 = Applies perfectly

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

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

16. Regression Analysis
 Based on Dohmen et al., our regression models
are:
 Reciprocityi = β1SCi+ β2Trusti + β3Xi+E
 SC, 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 +E
 PR 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)

17. Regression Results
 Result 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

18. (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 76
R-squared 0.028 0.183 0.244
Robust standard errors in
parentheses
*** p<0.01, ** p<0.05,
*p<0.1

19. Fin.
Thank you!