Humans frequently behave cooperatively. Human cooperation is obvious to ordinary persons in everyday life. In laboratory experiments, a large share of humans cooperate according to social norms if others cooperate likewise, even if not cooperating offers a higher, immediate objective reward. Similarly, a large share of humans also punish others who do not cooperate according to social norms, even if punishing has immediate, objective net cost to the person who does the punishing. These two patterns of behavior together are called strong reciprocity.[1]
Strong reciprocity is sensitive to subtle aspects of communication. The social norms that are the reference points for strong reciprocity are products of social communication.[2] In laboratory experiments, participants who engage in relevant pre-play verbal communication, who engage in oblique eye gaze, who tap each other lightly on the shoulder or arm, or who use a computer displaying eyespots, behave more cooperatively.[3] Given the importance of human cooperation for humans’ ecological position relative to other animals, humans have likely undergone natural selection for effectively signaling cooperation.
Experimental work on strong reciprocity hasn’t adequately accounted for individual differences. Experiments have found that, among persons in common cultural circumstances, a sizable share of persons act according to strong reciprocity, and a sizeable share do not.[4] Experiments have found that demographic characteristics, including sex, do not significantly differentiate between these two groups of persons.[5] The existence of considerable individual differences in strong reciprocity within a culture isn’t well explained.
Experimental findings of the insignificance of demographics for strong reciprocity concern demographics of individual participants who understand themselves to be playing with anonymous others. Such demographic information is not ecologically relevant. Moreover, abstracting from the demographics of opponents or assuming that the demographics of opponents are irrelevant to participants is not consistent with testing the significance of participants’ demographics.[6] Demographics, in particular sex, may in fact be highly relevant to propensity to engage in strong reciprocity.
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Notes:
[1] For differing perspectives on strong reciprocity, see Bowles & Ginis (2011) and Guala (2012).
[2] On subtle aspects of social circumstances, see, e.g. Bardsley (2005) and Bardsley (2008). The issues are not limited to whether persons who interact with participants understand the structure and purpose of the experiments. What participants understand themselves to be doing can depend on where the experiment takes place, differences in status between participants and non-participants with whom the participants interact, participants’ sense of the specific circumstances of interaction (e.g., via computer terminals in a relatively quiet and barren room), and other subtle aspects of participants’ full sense of their circumstances. Controlling vocal communication with participants is a weak control on communication with participants.
[3] See Valley et al. (2002), Kurzban (2001), and Haley & Fessler (2005). Kurzban (2001) found effects of eye gaze and touch only for male subjects:
This finding is alarming in that it seems that males are ready to accept extremely scant evidence that they are in a meaningful group capable of cooperating. If indeed male psychology is well designed for cooperating because of adaptations for intergroup conflict, then the ease with which males form cooperative associations is also the ease with which males can form groups for the purpose of intergroup conflict {references omitted}.
Id. pp. 256-7. The risk of males cooperating to address the demonization of males and the social disposal of males in intergroup conflict seems remote.
[4] The split is close to equal:
Taken together, the fraction of subjects showing strong positive reciprocity is rarely below 40 and sometimes 60 percent whereas the fraction of selfish subjects is also often between 40 and 60 percent.
Fehr, Fischbacher & Gächter (2002) p. 8. This remarkable division has attracted relatively little attention in scholarship on cooperation.
[5] Henrich et al. (2001) p. 76. Using subjects from U.S. universities, Cox & Deck (2006) found in laboratory behavioral experiments that women’s behavior was more sensitive to the costs of generosity than was men’s. That result is consistent with more developed social intelligence in women.
[6] In experimental games testing cooperation among nonhuman animals, ensuring that animals sense that they are playing against another animal is in tension with preventing communication between the animals. Noë (2006), pp. 11-12, provides an insightful discussion of this problem. Because humans have a more developed capacity to make sense of human presence, this problem is less significant in experiments involving humans. Nonetheless, the issue of sense of presence in anonymous human cooperation experiments deserves further consideration.
[image] Elephant herd at Ambroseli National Park (Kenya), with Mount Kilimanjaro in the background. Thanks to Amoghavarsha and Wikipedia. Elephant herds consist of adult females and young of both sexes. Male elephants are forcibly excluded from herds at puberty.
References:
Bardsley, Nicholas. 2005. “Experimental Economics and the Artificiality of Alteration.” Journal of Economic Methodology. 12: 239-251.
Bardsley, Nicholas. 2008. “Dictator game giving: altruism or artefact?” Experimental Economics. 11 (2): 122-133.
Bowles, Samuel, and Herbert Gintis. 2011. A cooperative species human reciprocity and its evolution. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
Cox, James C. and Cary A. Deck. 2006. “When are Women More Generous than Men?” Economic Inquiry. 44(4): 587-598.
Fehr, Ernst, Urs Fischbacher and Simon Gächter. 2002. “Strong reciprocity, Human Cooperation and the Enforcement of Social Norms.” Human Nature. 13: 1-25.
Guala, Francesco. 2012. “Reciprocity: Weak or strong? What punishment experiments do (and do not) demonstrate.” With discussion and response. Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 35 (01): 1-15.
Haley, Kevin J. and Daniel M.T. Fessler. 2005. “Nobody’s watching? Subtle cues affect generosity in an anonymous economic game.” Evolution and Human Behavior. 26: 245-256.
Henrich, Joseph, Robert Boyd, Samuel Bowles, Colin Camerer, Ernst Fehr, Herbert Gintis and Richard McElreath. 2001. “In Search of Homo Economicus: Behavioral Experiments in 15 Small-Scale Societies.” American Economic Review. 91(2): 73-78.
Kurzban, Robert. 2001. “The Social Psychophysics of Cooperation: Nonverbal Communication in the Public Goods Game.” Journal of Nonverbal Behavior. 25(4): 241-259.
Noë, Ronald. 2006. “Cooperation experiments: coordination through communication versus acting apart together.” Animal Behaviour. 71: 1-18.
Valley, Kathleen, Leigh Thompson, Robert Gibbons and Max H. Bazerman. 2002. “How Communication Improves Efficiency in Bargaining Games.” Games and Economic Behavior. 38: 127-155.