On Acknowledging Thanks for Performing a Favor
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Two studies examined whether the acknowledgments given to an expressed thanks for performing a favor was merely phatic in nature, that is, does not convey information but just serves a social role in establishing and maintaining relationships. We were especially interested in a non-literal form of acknowledgment, responses such as “anytime,” which, if taken literally, invites unwanted intrusions into one's life. In the reported studies the cost of the favor was manipulated (in terms of effort, resources or time needed to perform the favor) and whether the gender of the person performing the favor was the same or opposite as that for whom the favor was done. Across the two studies, the non-literal acknowledgment was less likely to be employed for high-cost favors, was more likely to be recalled compared to other acknowledgments generated at the same base rate and was used differently by female and male participants. These data demonstrate that people moderate their thanks as a function of the cost of the favor and to whom they are speaking, results indicating that gratitude acknowledgments cannot be considered mere phatic communication. In a more general way, these data indicate the importance of considering social knowledge in nonliteral language usage.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.006 | 0.033 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".