David B. Strohmetz

Who they are

The paper's bibliographic record lists Strohmetz with Monmouth University, and the University of West Florida's research repository also lists the paper among his outputs. This page records only what those records state. Biography beyond the cited work is not given here.

Key papers

Sweetening the till: the use of candy to increase restaurant tipping (2002), with Rind, Fisher and Lynn. The paper starts from a practice the authors describe as common, servers giving diners an unexpected sweet when they deliver the bill. In two experiments, the researchers tested the effect of that gesture on the tip. In the first, diners who received a small piece of chocolate with the bill tipped more than diners who received none. In the second, the size of the tip varied with how much candy was given and with the manner in which it was offered. The authors weighed two rival explanations, that servers were managing impressions or that the sweet put diners in a good mood, and argued that reciprocity was "a stronger explanation" than either.

Key ideas

The study brings the reciprocity principle out of the laboratory and into a setting where it is easy to observe. A restaurant bill suits the rule well: the gift comes from the person who benefits, the chance to repay arrives within minutes, and the diner decides the size of the repayment. The finding that the amount and manner of the gift mattered suggests that diners responded to the gesture itself rather than simply to the sugar.

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