Give and Take: a revolutionary Approach to Success pdfdrive com

participants in direct exchange will be less inclined to identify with the group
because they will be less likely to derive the emotional experience of group
membership,” Willer’s team writes. In generalized giving, on the other hand, the
community is the source of the gifts you receive. An effective system of
generalized giving typically involves cycles of exchange with the following
structure: person A gives to person B, who gives to person C. When Freecycle
members receive multiple items from different people, they attribute the benefits
to the whole group, not to individual members.
Together, these two forces facilitate the development of a bond with
Freecycle. Instead of buying an item from another person, people feel that
they’re receiving gifts from a community. The gratitude and goodwill generated
means that they begin to identify with the community, seeing themselves as

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Freecycle members. Once this identification happens, people are willing to give
freely to anyone who shares the Freecycle identity. This extends their
willingness to give across the whole Freecycle community, spurring members to
offer items that they no longer need in response to requests when they can help.
By giving away things they don’t want, takers can feel like they’re not losing
anything of value, yet maintain the norm of giving so they can still get free stuff
when they want it. For matchers, because there’s no way to pay it back, paying it
forward is the next best thing—especially since they’re helping people just like
themselves. This is what happened with the parents who gave away baby
supplies: they restored their sense of a reciprocal, even exchange by donating
items they no longer needed to fellow parents in similar situations.
People are motivated to give to others when they identify as part of a
common community. But not all individuals and groups are equally likely to
attract this type of identification. There’s something else about the Freecycle
community that fosters identification—and it’s a factor well understood by
Adam Rifkin.

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