Our inaugural studies focused on demonstrating that exchange behaviors would occur and be welcomed in our exchange conditions, but would be avoided and reacted to negatively (if they did occur) in our communal conditions. We had to start here because, at the time, equity theory was the dominant theory for explaining how people gave and received benefits in relationships. The overall extant assumption was that giving benefits created inequities, resulted in discomfort, and called inequities, for repayment (see Walster et al.,1978). We predicted that only if an exchange relationship was desired would people positively respond to being repaid for a favor they had given to a target ; reactions to such a payment would be negative when a communal relationship was desired. This should occur, we reasoned, because acting in accord with an exchange norm would imply that a communal relationship was not desired.