Common Courtesy Day

What the day is

Common Courtesy Day is observed on March 21. The costs of the opposite behavior are covered on the Be Nasty entry in March; this one concerns why courtesy works at all.

Origin and background

Reciprocity is among the most robust findings in social psychology. People who receive something, however small and however unasked for, feel an obligation to give something back, and the obligation operates even when the original gift was trivial or unwanted. Field experiments have found that including a small unrequested gift with a request substantially increases compliance, and the effect holds across cultures.

That strength is precisely why it is exploited. Free samples, complimentary items and unsolicited enclosures in charity mailings all work on the same mechanism, and the person receiving them is usually unaware of feeling obliged. Recognizing the pattern is a reasonable defense: a gift that arrives attached to a request is a transaction rather than a courtesy.

Ordinary courtesy is the benign version of the same machinery. Holding a door, letting a car in, acknowledging a greeting, none of it costs much, and each one leaves the other person marginally more inclined to do the same for somebody else. It is the mechanism behind the observation that politeness propagates through a queue or a road.

There is a cultural caveat worth carrying. What counts as courteous varies considerably: directness reads as honesty in some places and rudeness in others, and the appropriate amount of thanking differs sharply, as covered on the International Thank You Day entry. Assuming your own defaults are universal is itself a minor discourtesy.

The version that costs something is the one that counts, which is the argument made on Inconvenience Yourself Day in February.

How to take part

• Do the small thing that costs you a moment and saves somebody else one.
• Acknowledge people who are paid to serve you, by name where you know it.
• Notice when a free gift arrives attached to a request.
• Let the car in, and thank the one that lets you in.
• Assume unfamiliar manners are different rather than absent.