The Atlantic:

Free samples help consumers learn more about products, and they make retail environments more appealing. But samples are operating on a more subconscious level as well.

“Reciprocity is a very, very strong instinct,” says Dan Ariely, a behavioral economist at Duke University. “If somebody does something for you”—such as giving you a quarter of a ravioli on a piece of wax paper—“you really feel a rather surprisingly strong obligation to do something back for them.”

Am I weird because I’ve never taken a free food sample in a grocery store? I just find the whole idea strange. For those of you outside the USA or Canada, is this “free samples in grocery stores” a thing in other countries, too?