Balanced vs. Negative Reciprocity
How you exchange tells you exactly how close someone is. Close = even trade. Stranger = get-what-you-can.
Grounded in the research on Reciprocity (cultural anthropology) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reciprocity_(cultural_anthropology)
The model
Marshall Sahlins (Stone Age Economics, 1972) split human exchange into three modes on a single spectrum: generalized, balanced, and negative reciprocity. Generalized is pure giving with no scorecard (a parent feeding a kid). Balanced is a direct, even trade — customary equivalents swapped with little or no delay. Negative reciprocity is, in his exact words, 'the attempt to get something for nothing with impunity': haggling, bartering for advantage, theft, the con. Most of your daily interactions live in the balanced-to-negative range, and which one you're in is rarely an accident.
The mechanism: social distance
Sahlins' core claim is that reciprocity type tracks kinship/social distance, not personality. Close in (household, tight friends) you run generalized — you give, you don't count. Mid-distance (community, acquaintances, your village) you run balanced — favors get returned in kind, roughly on time, and an unpaid debt rots the relationship. With outsiders and strangers you slide into negative — each party maximizes their own take. Morality becomes relative to distance: the same move that's 'fair' with a stranger is a betrayal with a friend. Lévi-Strauss pushed this further, arguing reciprocity underlies kinship and language itself; Marcel Mauss (The Gift, 1925) showed the gift always carries an obligation to return.