A laboratory study examined effects of friendship on expectations of pricing in personal business transactions. Friends expect to pay more but charge less for a variety of commodities than do strangers. Remarkably, without discussion, friends agree on prices for commodities, whereas strangers do...

Social norms constrain people's behaviors in transactions, but such norms are rarely investigated. Script theory provides a coherent, holistic structure for understanding socially mediated behaviors. This study proposes terms of a script for the pricing behavior of transactors when friendship is...