Reciprocity: We Need Each Other

Reciprocity is the mutual exchange of something between people. It can be care, help, attention, time, knowledge, a favor, a meal, or a ride somewhere. Sometimes you are the person who needs something, and sometimes you are the person who has something to give. Over the course of a relationship—or a lifetime—we move back and forth between the two.

I've been thinking about reciprocity lately because so much of our conversation around wellbeing focuses on what we need to receive. We need social support. We need people we can call. We need to feel cared for, included, and connected to a community. All of that is true, but an interesting body of research suggests there may be another part of the equation that deserves just as much attention: we may also benefit from having opportunities to contribute.

The Other Half of Social Support

When researchers study social support, an obvious question is whether having people who help us is associated with better health. Researchers have also asked a slightly different question: What happens to the person providing the help?

A five-year study led by psychologist Michael Poulin followed 846 adults in the Detroit area. Researchers asked participants about stressful life experiences as well as the practical help they had provided to friends and family, including errands, transportation, shopping, housework, and childcare.

Stressful experiences were associated with greater mortality risk among people who had not reported helping others. Among those who had helped, however, that relationship between stress and mortality wasn't evident in the same way. The researchers described helping as potentially buffering the association between stress and mortality. Importantly, they also called for additional research to understand causation and whether the findings generalize to other populations and kinds of helping.

I find that fascinating, not because it means helping someone move a couch is a treatment for chronic stress, but because of the question underneath it. Perhaps helping someone else doesn't make our own problems disappear, but it can remind us that even while we're dealing with them, there are still things we can do. We still have something to contribute.

Reciprocity Isn't Just About Giving

If we stopped there, it would be easy to turn this into another wellness commandment: Help more people. It's good for you.

But that's not really what reciprocity means, and some of the most interesting research I've found suggests that simply giving more and more isn't necessarily better.

A much larger study followed 6,325 American adults for 23 years and examined the amount of practical support people both gave and received. The researchers found that people whose giving and receiving were relatively balanced had lower all-cause mortality risk than people who disproportionately received support or disproportionately gave it. They also found that moderate amounts of practical helping were associated with lower mortality risk than either very little helping or very high amounts of helping. These findings were correlational, so they don't establish that the balance itself caused people to live longer.

Still, I think that's a much more interesting picture of human relationships.

Reciprocity isn't giving until you're empty, and it isn't proving that you never need anyone. It's being able to say, I can help you, and I can also let you help me.

Our culture tends to treat independence as evidence that someone is doing well. I can handle it. I don't need anything. I'll figure it out myself. There is certainly value in competence and independence, but complete self-sufficiency isn't really how human communities work.

Someone grows food. Someone repairs the road. Someone watches the children. Someone teaches. Someone knows how to fix the sink. Someone brings dinner when a neighbor is sick. Someone needs a ride, and someone else has a car. Next year, the person who gave the ride may be the one who needs help.

Community doesn't require everyone to contribute exactly the same amount at exactly the same time. Reciprocity doesn't mean keeping a ledger either. I brought you soup Tuesday, therefore you owe me exactly one soup isn't much of a relationship.

Sometimes one person will need considerably more than they can give. Illness happens. Grief happens. Disability happens. Financial hardship happens. Life happens. A healthy community makes room for that because reciprocity is something that develops across relationships and over time, not a requirement that every exchange be perfectly equal.

We Have to Let People Give Back

I think this part is particularly easy to overlook for people who are accustomed to being capable.

If I'm always the caretaker, organizer, fixer, driver, cook, volunteer, problem-solver, or person who shows up, but I never allow anyone to do those things for me, then I'm not really participating in reciprocity. I'm also removing an opportunity for someone else to contribute.

Accepting help can be surprisingly uncomfortable. It can make us feel vulnerable, indebted, incapable, or like we're inconveniencing someone. Sometimes it genuinely is easier to do the thing ourselves.

But perhaps being part of a community means becoming comfortable enough to occupy both positions. Sometimes I have something you need. Sometimes you have something I need. Neither position determines which of us is more capable, valuable, or important.

We just need each other.

Reciprocity Gives Us Somewhere to Participate

The more I've been reading about human connection, loneliness, volunteering, relaxation, touch, nature, and wellbeing, the harder it becomes for me to think about health as something we create entirely by ourselves.

We can exercise, meditate, practice breathwork, spend time outside, eat well, and sleep. All of those things can matter. But perhaps wellbeing isn't only about taking increasingly excellent care of ourselves as individuals. Some part of it may also come from participating in relationships and communities where support is allowed to move in both directions.

There are people who would show up for me.

There are people I would show up for.

Sometimes I receive.

Sometimes I contribute.

And perhaps reciprocity is one of the quiet ways a collection of individual people becomes something more meaningful: a community.

There is another idea hiding inside all of this, though. Why does having something to contribute seem to matter so much to us? Why is it important not only to be cared for, but also to feel that our presence, abilities, effort, and attention have value to other people?

Psychologists have a word for that too.

Mattering.

Sources & Further Reading

Poulin, M. J., Brown, S. L., Dillard, A. J., & Smith, D. M. (2013). “Giving to Others and the Association Between Stress and Mortality.” American Journal of Public Health.
Read the full study through PubMed Central

Chen, E., et al. (2021). “The Balance of Giving Versus Receiving Social Support and All-Cause Mortality in a US National Sample.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Read the full study through PubMed Central