Increasing Customer Tips with the “Rule of Reciprocity”

Posted on Jan 3, 2013

In 1974, Phillip Kunz, a sociologist at Brigham Young University, wanted to see what would happen if he sent Christmas cards to people he didn’t know.   He picked up several local phone directories and chose 600 addresses at random, starting a new Christmas list of complete strangers. He included handwritten notes or a photo of himself and his family. And the response was overwhelming.   Over 200 people replied, sending photos and family newsletters of their own, as if they had known Kunz for years.   Robert Cialdini is an emeritus psychologist at Arizona State University. What happened to Kunz, he explains, is the direct result of one of the rules that most interest him: the rule of reciprocation. The rule, he says, is drilled into us as children.   “We are obligated to give back to others, the form of behavior that they have first given to us,” he says. “Essentially thou shall not take without giving in return.”   You can see the same thing when it comes to tipping.   If a server brings you a check and does not include a candy on the check tray, you will tip the server whatever it is that you feel the server deserves. “But if there’s a mint on the tray, tips go up 3.3 percent,” Cialdini says.   According to Cialdini, the researchers who did that study also discovered that if while delivering the tray with the mint the server paused, looked the customers in the eye, and then gave them a second mint while telling them the candy was specifically for them, “tips went through the roof.”   Servers who gave a second mint got a 20 percent increase over their normal tip.   Continue Reading Excerpted from NPR.org