Reciprocity

I'm in mpw class now watching a video about reciprocity with this academic professor from stanford explainin the power of reciprocity and increasing the likelihood of influencing others around us to say yes to things we want them to. and he guaranteed it works.

he cited a research they conducted whereby his co-researcher randomly picked addresses from the phone book and started sending xmas cards to them despite not knowing them. n to their amazement..a ton of xmas cards returned. And this happened for the next 10 years and neither parties knew who each other were!
It was also found that e son of one of the recipients of e cards..had to travel to Arizona (where the cards originated)..n they couldnt find a place for him to stay. Thus e recipient wrote to the professor explaining the case n asked if e son could stay with em..n e reply was yes!

They've nv met.

The professor then went on to cite more cases with e example of Ethiopia sending money to mexico to help relieve the victims in Mexico due to the earthquake in 2007. The world were puzzled and asked.."why did u send e money when ur ppl r starvin n homeless??"

n the ruler of e Ethiopia sat up straight n said.."becos in 1935..when Italy invaded us..Mexico came to our aid..n helped us.."
Despite being 72 years down the road..Ethiopia still felt e obligation to reciprocate and return the goodwill.

He conlcuded that the law of reciprocity exists and if we do good to others, others will do good to us! We shud go out and do good to as many ppl on as many things as possible!

I was sold by the idea for about 5 seconds before i started thinking..

We've been sending money..help..knowledge and technology (esp water tech) to Malaysia and Indonesia (tsunami military and financial relieve). We got nothing but accusations, imported robbery (majority of crime in singapore e last few yrs were by Msians), labelled small red dot and constantly threatened by politicians there.

Reciprocity?? so much for guarantees...