Emotional consequences of social debt sharing in communal relationships.

Abstract

Whereas previous research has often struggled to disentangle the behavioral effects of gratitude and indebtedness felt in response to favors received by individuals, the present article clearly manifests their unique functions by investigating what happens if not just the individual but also their romantic partner is involved in a mutual exchange of favors. We propose that people in communal relationships share each other’s social debt toward others that are not part of the dyad, and the emotion of indebtedness plays a vital role in that process. Three preregistered experiments revealed that people’s emotions (gratitude and indebtedness) toward favors that their partners receive from others, or extend to them, are similar to when they receive or extend these favors themselves. Study 1 (N = 470) revealed that participants experienced vicarious gratitude and indebtedness to favors extended to their partners by others. Additional studies suggested that social debt between participants and third parties could be repaid by (Study 2; N = 507) and repaid to (Study 3; N = 304) their partners. These effects did not exist for exchanges in noncommunal relationships, indicating that these could not be simply attributed to indirect reciprocity. Rather, we believe that social debt sharing is a core feature of communal relationships in social exchange, and the emotion of indebtedness forms the psychological mechanism underlying this process. Crucially, indebtedness but not gratitude drove people’s responses to shared debts, suggesting a unique function of indebtedness in mediating the social exchange of communal dyads.