Gächter Simon, Herrmann Benedikt
Centre of Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK.
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2009 Mar 27;364(1518):791-806. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2008.0275.
Understanding the proximate and ultimate sources of human cooperation is a fundamental issue in all behavioural sciences. In this paper, we review the experimental evidence on how people solve cooperation problems. Existing studies show without doubt that direct and indirect reciprocity are important determinants of successful cooperation. We also discuss the insights from a large literature on the role of peer punishment in sustaining cooperation. The experiments demonstrate that many people are 'strong reciprocators' who are willing to cooperate and punish others even if there are no gains from future cooperation or any other reputational gains. We document this in new one-shot experiments, which we conducted in four cities in Russia and Switzerland. Our cross-cultural approach allows us furthermore to investigate how the cultural background influences strong reciprocity. Our results show that culture has a strong influence on positive and in especially strong negative reciprocity. In particular, we find large cross-cultural differences in 'antisocial punishment' of pro-social cooperators. Further cross-cultural research and experiments involving different socio-demographic groups document that the antisocial punishment is much more widespread than previously assumed. Understanding antisocial punishment is an important task for future research because antisocial punishment is a strong inhibitor of cooperation.
理解人类合作的直接和根本来源是所有行为科学中的一个基本问题。在本文中，我们回顾了关于人们如何解决合作问题的实验证据。现有研究无疑表明，直接和间接互惠是成功合作的重要决定因素。我们还讨论了大量文献中关于同伴惩罚在维持合作中作用的见解。实验表明，许多人是“强互惠者”，即使未来合作没有收益或任何其他声誉收益，他们也愿意合作并惩罚他人。我们在俄罗斯和瑞士的四个城市进行的新的一次性实验中证明了这一点。我们的跨文化方法还使我们能够研究文化背景如何影响强互惠。我们的结果表明，文化对积极尤其是强烈的消极互惠有很大影响。特别是，我们发现亲社会合作者的“反社会惩罚”存在很大的跨文化差异。涉及不同社会人口群体的进一步跨文化研究和实验表明，反社会惩罚比以前认为的更为普遍。理解反社会惩罚是未来研究的一项重要任务，因为反社会惩罚是合作的强大抑制因素。
