Market For Friends

A good friend helps you move. A great friend helps you move a body.

I disagree with this, I think a great friend doesn't make you an accessory to murder.

I've been reading Predictably Irrational, and it has made me think about the decisions I've made in my life. He talks about the differences between people's willingness to do something based on market norms, vs. social norms.

SO WE LIVE in two worlds : one characterized by social exchanges and the other characterized by market exchanges. And we apply different norms to these two kinds of relationships. Moreover, introducing market norms into social exchanges, as we have seen, violates the social norms and hurts the relationships. Once this type of mistake has been committed, recovering a social relationship is difficult... if you've ever offered a potential romantic partner the chance to cut to the chase, split the cost of the courting process, and simply go to bed, the odds are that you will have wrecked the romance forever.
Ariely, Dan (2013-04-04). The Irrational Bundle (Kindle Locations 1242-1247). HarperCollins Publishers. Kindle Edition. 

In the book, he gives the example of a lawyer who may be perfectly fine doing pro-bono work (social norm), but say you were to offer them $30 to help you with something, they'll probably refuse as they don't think it's worth their time (market norm). Many people are  perfectly happy to help their friends out for free, because that's just what you do as friends.

It got me thinking, at what point do market norms come into play with regards to social interactions? I can think of a bunch of people off the top of my head who I will happily drive to the airport at 3 A.M. for free, but I feel like a part of that is due to the length of our friendship, and how likely I believe they will reciprocate. I can also think about a much larger group of people who I would refuse to drive to the airport at 3 A.M. for free, and once again, this is mostly due to how likely I believe they will do the same for me. However, I will gladly send them my chocolate chip cookie recipe, or tell them which restaurant that photo I posted on Facebook came from. Surely this is a market norm? I am basing how far I am willing to go for them on how likely I believe they will go for me. Maybe I'm completely cynical, and nobody else looks at their friendships this way, but I get the feeling that I am not alone in this view.

There are other factors. One of the biggest ones for me is past actions - I feel like I owe something to people who have done something nice for me in the past. The problem is, how do you deal with memory inflation/deflation? For instance, I remember being really upset one night, and I was just sitting by the train tracks. I felt so alone, like there was nobody who would want to help me. I don't know why, but I found myself dialing MrMan1's number, and I didn't want to tell him what was wrong, I just wanted him to talk to me. I think he ended up talking for about half an hour straight, and it made me feel much better. At the time, I felt a bit like I owed him my life, but now, I can't recall exactly how I was feeling - was I really going to jump onto the train tracks? I don't really know what my "debt" to MrMan1 is at.

On the flip side, there was a time when someone was saying some pretty bad things about me, and only one person defended me. When that person asks a favour of me, I usually think about that time, but it has been years since that has happened. Has my "debt" been paid back yet?

Maybe working at a bank has influenced me, but I have some friends who I feel are very far in "debt" to me. From my point of view, I have put in a lot more effort into the friendship, and I'm starting to wonder what I really get out of it. This is tied into my next post - also inspired by this book. The cost of keeping your options open. There is time that I put into friendships that I feel could be better spent on enhancing existing friendships, or making new ones.

To be continued....