Appropriate and equitable repayment of social debts

Abstract

Subjects read paragraphs describing social interactions in which they or a friend incurred a social debt in each of Foa's 1971 social resource categories. Then they either ranked the six categories in order of appropriateness for repayment of the debt (Expt 1) or rated the worth of the debt and the amount of repayment from each category that would constitute equitable repayment (Expt 2). Results showed (1) that while the circular configuration of categories proposed by Foa appears tenable in general, it does not hold for all of the individual categories, (2) that repayment in money is resisted, (3) that social debts are rated as of greater worth when the subjects are owed the debts than when they owe them, (4) that expected or proposed repayment is almost always less than the rated worth of the debt, and (5) that the relationship between the magnitudes of the debts and the magnitudes of the repayments depends upon the judged appropriateness of the categories for repayment.