Books I learn from: Predictably Irrational
August 4, 2011
Latest aha:
Relationships are of two kinds: social ones and buisness ones.
As soon as money is even mentioned, a relationship is likely to fall over into the transactional type, where we require payment and fairness.
When not, we can allow ourselves to be a lot more generous and giving: People do voluntary work for free, but when you offer them a SMALL amount of money for it, they don’t volonteer.
I’m realizing that is what ended lots of my good relationships:
Trying to make a financial transaction changed everything.
I used to think it was because I never realized how ungenerously those ex friends treated me until I saw their unvillingness to part from even a very small amount of money.
People I helped for months and years who, by not returning money, or demanding money, made me realize they didn’t value all the things I had done for them – why else would they ask me to also donate heaps of money to them?
But this theory, from economic psychology, tells me there are also this fact that added problems. As soon as you’ve reassigned your relationship to being buissness, your allowance for unfairness is automatically reduced..
