Editorial Board:
Editor:
George H. Conklin,
 North Carolina
 Central University

Board:
Bob Davis,
 North Carolina
 Agricultural and
 Technical State
 University

Richard Dixon,
 UNC-Wilmington

Ken Land,
 Duke University

Miles Simpson,
 North Carolina
 Central University

Ron Wimberley,
 N.C. State University

Robert Wortham,
 North Carolina
 Central University

Editorial Assistants

John W.M. Russell,
 Technical
 Consultants

Austin W. Ashe
 North Carolina
 Central University

® 

Volume 7, Number 2

Fall/Winter 2009

Helping Exchange Networks:  An Exploration of Subjective Attributions for "Completing"  a Social Exchange

by

Eric K. Shaw

Robert Wood Johnson
Medical School
 

Introduction

    In this paper, I seek to expand understandings of helping behavior and social exchange theory by explicitly focusing on the subjective causal attributions that actors make to "complete" an exchange. Using an ethnographic approach to study helping behavior, I have found that individuals frequently help others with the expectation that they will receive some kind of benefit at some point in the future.  Over time, helping exchanges are formed wherein actors are giving to and receiving from multiple others.  In this line of research, scholars have tended to take a more positivistic stance in the study of social exchanges and assume that outsiders to such exchanges can readily know whether or not one exchange is connected to another exchange (e.g., Emerson, 1972).

    While some research has focused on subjective or cognitive elements (such as mental accounting processes; see for example, Kollock, 1993; Stack, 1974), what remains neglected is research on the subjective dimension of actors' exchanges regarding how various connections are made between helping exchanges and the social contexts in which such exchanges are possible (see Figure 1).  How is it that people connect what might otherwise appear to be unrelated events?  And how do these subjective connections affect one's decision-making process to help another? 

   Using data from three social contexts – a Christian fundamentalist church, a Haitian immigrant community, and an urban gang – I present an analysis of the numerous helping exchanges formed in these seemingly dissimilar contexts, and explore the causal attributions actors make in "completing" various helping exchanges. 

     I outline here three overarching approaches in order to provide a broader picture of the theoretical developments in the study of helping behaviors. 

"Let Me Help You With That":AB

    The first approach focuses on why A helps B.  One area of research focuses on the normative pressures that prompt A to help B.  Prosocial norms are expectations to behave selflessly in bestowing benefits on others and require help-givers to render assistance regardless of the recipient's worthiness and without an expectation of being rewarded (Nunner-Winkler, 1984).  Social sanctions, as well as feelings of guilt and shame, prompt actors to abide by these norms.  Scholars have named and studied various prosocial norms such as social justice norms (Lerner, 1981) and equity norms (eg., Freedman, 1967; Cialdini, 1973; Lerner, 1974).

    Extensive work on bystander intervention models (Latane, 1970; Piliavin, 1981), and other situational determinants of helping in both emergency and everyday situations also focus on why A helps B.  Such situational variables include the ambiguity of the situation (Clark, 1972), the perceived competence of other bystanders (Bickman, 1971), the amount of cost involved in helping (Piliavin, 1972), the severity of the victim's distress (Harris and Meyer, 1973), the style of request for help (Langer, 1972), the physical attractiveness of the victim (Mims, 1975), the race of the recipient (Gaertner, 1971), the language and dress of the recipient (Harris and Baudin, 1973), and the familiarity of the recipient (Pearce, 1980). 

"You Scratch My Back and I'll Scratch Yours": 
AB, BA

    Extending the focus beyond just the sole actor (A), another area of research focuses on the expectations, obligations, and ultimately, the relationships that are formed when an actor helps another.  Extensive research here focuses on dyadic, direct exchanges to understand helping behavior.

    Social exchange theories have been developed to explain human behavior in general, and helping behavior in particular.  According to classical exchange theory (e.g., Thibaut, 1959; Blau, 1964; Homans, 1974), an actor's behavior is guided by the principle of maximizing rewards and minimizing costs in order to obtain the most profitable outcomes in any human interaction.  Individuals choose one activity instead of another if the one is more profitable or less costly to them than the other.  Social interactions will be repeated only if the participants in that interaction are reinforced as a function of having participated in the relationship.  According to this work, individuals engage in helping behavior as an instrumental means for receiving a personal reward (which may be materialistic or non-materialistic, such as social approval or gratitude).  Such work has emphasized that the helper must know something about the helpee (e.g., her trustworthiness) or have the capability to monitor their relationship and sanction inappropriate (e.g., free-riding) behavior in order to make a decision about whether or not to engage in a social exchange (Coleman, 1990).

    I also include in this line of research (of AB, BA) the sociobiological approach which attempts to explain human social behavior, along with animal behavior, in genetic and evolutionary terms.  Trivers (1971) has argued that there may be occasions when it is useful to help unrelated others, if it can be assumed that this will increase the probability of them helping you.  This strategy has been termed reciprocal altruism which is said to occur when an altruistic individual is likely to be "paid back" by the recipient at a later date.  According to evolutionary psychologists, for reciprocal altruism to work, it is important that the costs incurred and the benefits received be proportional. 

Generalized Exchange: 
AB, BC, CA

    Further development within social exchange theory focuses, not on direct forms of exchange, but on indirect, generalized exchanges (eg., Emerson, 1972).  In many ways, this multi-party interaction model provides greater explanatory power than the two-party, direct exchange model by acknowledging greater complexity of social exchange relationships.

    Drawing from Ekeh's (1974) work, the two main branches of indirect exchanges are 'chain generalized exchanges' and 'net generalized exchanges.'  While the former is equated with the basic notion of an indirect exchange which involves at least three transactors such that AB, BC, and CA, the latter refers to the performance of each unit of a group acting in relation to the rest of the group.  Ekeh illustrates this as follows:  If B is invited to dinner (along with C and D) by A, then B must reciprocate by inviting all of A, C, and D together at the same time and place to dinner (1974: 53, italics original).  Although such models move beyond the limitations of the two-person interaction model, they become problematic given the high degree of accountability required to sustain such exchanges as well as the assumption that an actor can accurately track each party's contribution in the chain.  Moreover, such models take a positivistic approach by assuming that what constitutes a "completed" exchange is something that is tangible and can be known by all participants in the helping exchange network.

    While each theoretical development helps answer many questions regarding who helps whom, when, and why, there remains a gap in our understanding of helping exchanges, namely, in the ways that actors cognitively connect what may otherwise appear to be unrelated instances of helping behavior.  Using ethnographic data sets from three different communities, I extend the framework of social exchange networks by tapping into actors' attributions of what constitutes a "completed" helping exchange.  I argue that the beliefs people have about everyday causal relationships is a critical dimension for understanding the constitution of actors' exchange networks.  And these subjective exchange networks have implications for their choices to engage in helping behavior.  This emphasis on the actor's definition of the situation is not totally individualistic, though, since individuals are influenced in their definition of situations by their culture and social groups.

    Ethnographic data were collected between 1997 and 2003 to study helping behaviors among three social groups:  Haitian immigrants, Christian fundamentalists, and gang members.  Details of these three contexts and the specific methods employed in each study have been previously described (Shaw, 2008).  In short, I was a participant observer in a Haitian community in Centretown (a city in New England) for approximately two years, conducted 10 in-depth interviews, and tracked helping behaviors by having 14 Haitian immigrants document their help given and received in a diary over a four-week period.  Next, I was a participant observer in a large Christian fundamentalist church called "All are Welcome Ministries" (AAWM) for approximately nine months, and had 13 church members keep track of their helping behaviors using the diary over a four month period.  Lastly, I gained access to an urban gang called the "Deuce Two Posse" where I used the "snowball sampling" technique to interview 16 gang members.  During the semi-structured interviews, subjects were asked about their involvement in the gang as well as details about any instances of help given and received from that day, that week, the last month, and within the past year.

   See Tables 1.1 and 1.2 for a description of the characteristics of the subjects and data collected on the number of instances of help given/received.

All three research studies were approved by the Rutgers University Institutional Review Board.  All names of individuals, organizations, or locations have been altered to ensure confidentiality. 

    All interviews were recorded and then transcribed by me.  Observations and other discussions with subjects were written up in fieldnotes.  These data were organized and managed using QSR NUD*IST qualitative software program to facilitate analysis and the classification and categorization of recurring themes.  Coding was iterative and informed by the accumulating data and continuing thematic analysis. 

The Christian Fundamentalist Church

    AAWM promulgates a prosperity message that says "give and it will come back to you."  As a type of generalized exchange system in which the actor (A) gives money to God (G) via the local church (B) and then receives blessings back from God via a third party (C), this can be represented as: 

The central mechanism to regulate this exchange system is the tithe.  AAWM holds firm to the Old Testament commandment to give a tenth of everything one earns back to God (i.e., the church) (based on Leviticus 27:30).  So rather than reliance on luck or fate, the prosperity message claims a direct connection to the supernatural help of God in all areas of life, and most notably, one's economic well-being.  The foundation of these beliefs rests on scriptures deemed to be sacred and these beliefs are promulgated routinely from the pulpit by church leaders.

    Most AAWM subjects made explicit causal connections between contributions given and benefits received that would otherwise appear unrelated.  Table 2 provides an overall picture of these subjects' self-reported instances of help given and help received.

Numerous instances of help received (i.e., blessings from God) can be categorized as "discounts from God" or "buying Power."  For instance, Roberta thanked God for helping her purchase items:  "[I] was able to get a dress suit for 45% [off of the] original price.  Praise God!"  For another woman who faithfully gave $71 at every Sunday service, several discounts and free dinners are defined as blessings from God.  Similarly, Jerry was able to purchase a $9 auto flasher for just $3.  And Beatrice wrote in her diary:

After having a flat tire on Saturday I took my car to a gas station… to get the tire fixed and was told that I needed to buy a new tire.  I took my car to my mechanic prepared to buy two new tires when I was told that my tire could be patched.  I saved $88.  Praise be to God for favor. 

    But financial gain is only part of the picture of what believers perceived to receive as blessings from God.  Two subjects acknowledged God's hand in their own or a loved one's physical well-being.  Another thanked God for allowing her and her family to survive the tornado that hit the area.  Another saw a simple time of rest as a blessing from God.  Although financial desires are important, this range of blessings reflects the extent to which believers made connections between their actions of tithing (and helping others) and receipt of blessings.

    In my discussions with AAWM subjects, I regularly heard explicit connections between acts of giving to the church (and helping others) and personal benefits.  Rachel, a 21 year old college student, documented regular tithes to the church and personal blessings included a free vacation from her boss as well as extra pay, and tuition deferment from the university she was attending.  As we spoke about these, she said:

…I don't always know if I'll be able to give (tithe) each week, and sometimes I don't.  But I try to make up for the times I miss.  You know, it's like the Pastor preached awhile ago:  …you walk out from the blessing of God when you don't give God your tithes….  It's like, I know I wouldn't have been blessed like I have been if I didn't try my best to tithe… Like when my school tuition got…deferred – just the week before I was tempted to not pay my tithe but I felt really convicted so I did.

… My husband and I are faithful tithers.  We don't give every week but we give our 10 percent… We were finally able to close on our first home.  Praise be to God!... I have always dreamed of owning my own home, but it never seemed like it would happen….  When we started attending [AAWM], we really took hold of what the pastor was sayin'.  He really showed us the promises of God… God wants to bless his children…

    Clearly, the capability – indeed, the prompting – for these church members to believe that their acts of giving today will be "repaid" by some unknown other at an unknown point in the future is based on a strong belief in the prosperity message, which is a central element of the church's teachings.  The church context reflects a setting in which the attributions that actors make between seemingly unrelated acts of giving and receiving are central to their decisions to continue giving and church leaders use numerous strategies to maintain and bolster members' adherence to the prosperity message (Shaw, 2001). 

The Haitian Immigrant Community

    While the fundamentalist church provides the clearest example of actors' giving to (namely, the church) or helping others and making cognitive connections to some future personal rewards, the Haitian immigrant community represents one in which such connections are much more implicit and ambiguous.  Haitian subjects rarely explained their helping exchanges in clear "if – then" terms.  However, one atypical example came from Jacques who explained to me: 

…I went to New York and everyone [people on the street] say 'give me 50 cents.'  What I should tell you is I don't have it...  But if I say 'no' there's something wrong because [I] have it… I give you 50 cents [today], tomorrow I'm gonna get two dollars. 

    For the most part, my observations and interviews, as well as the data from their self-reported diaries, suggest that there is a general orientation among Haitians to help other Haitians. Complying with this norm to help others in need provides a giver some assurance that others, then, will help the giver in her time of need.  This is evident in my query of a Haitian mother who was giving away her infant car seat.  She responded to me saying, "Well, [they] need it right now.  And I know that if I have another baby, someone will help me out."  Such attributions for receiving future rewards based on present acts of helping routinely came up in my interviews and were largely bounded by nationality.

    Another example came from my observations of a group of Haitians discussing plans to bring a sixteen year-old family member in Haiti to the U.S.  She was chosen primarily because she would immediately be able to enter school and learn English.  They discussed that, while in school, she would be expected to help out with the host's newborn son.  Then, upon graduation from high school, she would be expected to enter the workforce and thus have income to help other families back in Haiti.  This example reflects the beginnings of an exchange relationship where the new immigrant is expected to "repay" her hosts (and the others who helped in this process) by contributing to certain domestic duties.  Moreover, she is expected to "repay" those who helped her come to America by joining the pool of viable contributors who send financial remittances to those back in Haiti.

    To understand the broader picture of these Haitians' helping exchanges, I present data from the self-reported diaries in which subjects recorded a total of 626 instances of helping behavior (given or received).  The majority of these recordings have to do with the everyday needs of eating, transportation, and child care (see Table 3).

I present details from the categories "sending remittances" and "giving food" to highlight the nature of some of the helping exchanges that were documented. 

Sending Remittances

    Haitians in the U.S. are expected to help their extended family back in Haiti in material ways (Stepick, 1988).  During my research in Centretown, I observed numerous occasions in which Haitians sent remittances back home, typically when someone was traveling to Haiti since there is considerable distrust in Haitian infrastructures for getting mail or goods delivered to the rightful persons.

    One of the most extensive instances of sending goods back to Haiti came when Monique's brother made plans to ship a computer to Monique's son in Haiti.  Having connections to a Haitian man who runs a business shipping large parcels to Haiti, Monique had several weeks to collect goods before the ship's departure.  Word quickly spread of her undertaking, and soon, her home was filled with clothes, shoes, towels, toiletries, and hair care products brought by numerous Centretown Haitians.  While some items were earmarked for specific individuals, the bulk of the goods were given without any stipulations on who would the miscellaneous items. 

Giving Food

    Food is an important cultural element for Haitians.  Stepick (1988) writes (based on his data from Haitians in Florida):

People who give food are establishing credit.  People who receive food accept a social debt.  Lucy (a Haitian woman) was paying Sue (a graduate student researching Miami Haitians) back for all the little favors that Sue had provided, including the transportation and information that Sue had shared in the past.  In sending food to Haiti, Lucy was also paying her mother back for all that mothers provide over a lifetime.  At the same time, Lucy was establishing a future claim to receive more.  Sue would be expected to continue providing transportation.  Lucy's mother would be expected to continue to be a loving mother (p. 21).

Stepick's account places these particular instances of giving within a model of direct exchange (AB; BA).  Based on my research, I contend that the giving of food (and other forms of helping) extends beyond such reciprocal expectations.

    For example, on one occasion, I went with Marie to her aunt's home whom she hadn't seen in some time.  Her aunt lived in a different city than Marie, and we visited for several hours.  When it came time to leave, Marie's aunt began gathering various items from her cupboards and refrigerator, filling several grocery bags with plantains, dishes of rice and beans, crabs, and more.  She even offered to go to the grocery store to buy anything else that Marie might want.  Probing to try to understand why this helping behavior took place, I heard explanations that when someone comes to visit you, you don't let them leave empty-handed.  While Marie was not in any great need for the groceries, such instances of giving to visitors is a social norm.  If we extrapolate this story to a time when the aunt visits someone else, we begin to see a network of helping exchanges that reflects the model:  AB, C, D; X, Y, ZA.  In this manner, A gives food to any visitor (B, C, D) and expects that when she visits others (X, Y, Z) they, in turn, will provide her with food.

    Such giving tends not to be tied to direct exchange or even generalized exchange networks, but rather reflects a more ambiguous belief that if you receive help, you should repay it to others (not necessarily simply to those who helped you), and if you give help, you can count on others (not necessarily those you helped) to help you in the future.  This is not to say that all Haitians abide by these normative expectations or that free-riding doesn't exist.  But by helping others, one maintains a web of relations that she can turn to when in need.  When one violates these normative obligations, the likelihood of benefiting from others is hampered. 

The Deuce-Two Posse

    The Deuce-Two Posse is an all-male, all African-American gang with some 25 members.  Deuce-Two Posse members range in age from 12 to 25 years old.  While no gang member pointed to a single person as the leader, subjects tended to identify two or three individuals as being "at the top" (as one member put it).  The Deuce-Two Posse is a territorial gang (Sheldon, 2001) in that it operates within a specific geographic area (a particular neighborhood block) and, as a result, gets involved in conflicts with other gangs over their respective turfs.  While the Deuce-Two posse is involved with drug dealing, it is only a minor part of the overall activities of the gang.  A lot of time is spent simply "hanging out" and many spend time in various after-school programs and doing "normal" adolescent activities – playing basketball at the local court and playing video games at a member's home.

    As part of the semi-structured interviews to try to understand their helping behavior attributions, I included several specific questions to prompt them to think about the help they've received and why they have helped others.  During one interview, Damian says:

… When my son was born, all my homies was there for me, you know, they gave him some toys and clothes and stuff we needed.  When [another member of the Deuce-Two Posse] had his first baby, I made damn sure to help him out. 

Several of the gang members made similar kinds of statements indicating felt-obligations to help a fellow friend out because he had helped them out (AB, BA).

    The larger picture of the gang members' helping behavior, however, suggests that they tend to engage in helping exchanges without a specific mental accounting system to make sure that if A gives to B, then B must repay A.  The gang members are more like the Haitian community (and less like the church members) in that their subjective connections are bounded by their community of friends, family, and spatial geography.  Gang members recorded 166 instances of help received from and help given to other gang members (see Table 4).

Although these instances of help are based on subjects' recollections rather than day-to-day diary recordings, it is apparent that gang members regularly help one another in a variety of ways.

    The most frequent form of help given or received falls under the category "Helping with a minor personal problem."  For instance, Tre described how one of his fellow gang members helped him by returning a video game to the local video rental store (so he wouldn't have to pay a late charge).  Another gang member helped Tre by "covering for him" (telling Tre's mother that Tre was with him) when he snuck out at night to see his girlfriend.  Another gang member, Shaun, described how Damian helped him with his "basketball skills."

    Gang members also recalled a number of situations that entailed much more serious personal problems.  Dante described one night where several gang members were rough-housing with each other and he ended up breaking his arm.  The other gang members took him to the hospital and waited there with him while he got a cast put on his arm.  Another gang member, Junebug, spoke in somewhat vague terms about the time when the gang "was there for me" when he was having problems at home.  Similarly, Tyson spoke about how the gang "took him in" when his father became drunk and abusive.  Dante recalled the night he and several other members were "hanging on the corner" and the police started "harassing us."  As Dante explained to me, when one of the officers shoved him, another gang member pushed the officer enabling Dante to get up and run away.

    Helping with special events was another common category.  Several gang members spoke in general terms about giving and/or receiving gifts at Christmas or at one's birthday.  Damian spoke of the time when a number of other gang members helped him out by giving him gifts for his newborn son.  And both K.O. and "Peace" talked about how certain gang members helped them (either financially or emotionally) when they each had a death in the family. 

    This paper has reinforced and elaborated upon the idea that between 'cause and effect' there are many psychosocial interpretations that determine the way in which the world appears to an actor (Blumer, 1969).  Based on empirical evidence from three social contexts, my argument suggests that if I believe some future personal reward is contingent on my "good" actions of helping someone today, then I am likely to choose to help for it is in my own self-interest.  Then, when that future reward materializes, I attribute its occurrence to that initial act of helping, thus "completing" an exchange between what would otherwise be unrelated events.  These cognitive connections serve as reinforcers to help again in future situations.

    What is clearly evident across the three sites is that these kinds of attributions are most pronounced and explicit among the church members.  These subjects provided numerous examples of cognitive connections between certain acts of giving (e.g., tithing) and receipt of benefits from others (defined as blessings from God).  The church context also reflects the most diffuse forms of helping exchanges wherein actors give (in large part) to the church and perceive to receive future benefits that come from a potentially infinite source of givers (e.g., a department store, or boss).  Their propensity to make such attributions is largely due to the ideological message promulgated by church leaders.  These ideological underpinnings serve as effective substitutes for the physical capabilities of actors to monitor and sanction non-compliance.  In both the Haitian and gang communities, such attributions are more ambiguous and implicit, and are largely bounded by ethnic, familial, and spatial boundaries.  And in the Haitian and gang contexts, actors may be able to monitor and sanction others for not abiding by the social norms to help others.

    One common thread across all three sites is the evidence of self-interest as a basis for why someone chooses to help another (even when the personal return is unknown).  I give today with the belief that some future personal benefit is contingent upon that act of giving.  There are, indeed, many beliefs about everyday cause-and-effect relationships.  For instance, the Vedic and Buddhist notion of karma is the idea that what one does in this life will determine one's place in a subsequent life, and also that good deeds and wrongdoings may be repaid in this life as well (Anand, 1982).  In more general terms, we hear people say that "everything happens for a reason."  We teach our children that "good things come to those who wait."  And without a Little League coach grinding into his/her young players that "cheaters never win," the players might not arrive at the idea that an act of cheating will somehow result in losing the ballgame.

    What I believe I have tapped into is a rather pervasive lay belief in the way the world is ordered and how everyday cause-and-effect relationships are manifested.  Lay understandings of many cause-and-effect relationships are, for the most part, socially determined.  We are socialized to "lump" (Zerubavel, 1997) certain qualities and characteristics together (e.g. beauty, goodness, honesty, hard work), but we are also taught to "connect" these in a causal way to appropriate outcomes.  Observations such as these led Heider (1958) to view the belief in a just world as a pervasive cognitive tendency.  Such assumptions have a functional component that is tied to the image of a manageable and predictable world.  In order to plan, work for, and obtain things they want, and avoid those which are frightening or painful, people must assume that there are manageable procedures that are effective in producing the desired end states.  Such beliefs about helping others and receiving help provide a basic sense of social order in their lives. 

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