Fehr Ernst, Fischbacher Urs, Gächter Simon
Institute for Empirical Research in Economics, University of Zürich, Blümlisalpstr. 10, CH-8006, Zürich, Switzerland.
University of St. Gallen, USA.
Hum Nat. 2002 Mar;13(1):1-25. doi: 10.1007/s12110-002-1012-7.
This paper provides strong evidence challenging the self-interest assumption that dominates the behavioral sciences and much evolutionary thinking. The evidence indicates that many people have a tendency to voluntarily cooperate, if treated fairly, and to punish noncooperators. We call this behavioral propensity "strong reciprocity" and show empirically that it can lead to almost universal cooperation in circumstances in which purely self-interested behavior would cause a complete breakdown of cooperation. In addition, we show that people are willing to punish those who behaved unfairly towards a third person or who defected in a Prisoner's Dilemma game with a third person. This suggests that strong reciprocity is a powerful device for the enforcement of social norms involving, for example, food sharing or collective action. Strong reciprocity cannot be rationalized as an adaptive trait by the leading evolutionary theories of human cooperation (in other words, kin selection, reciprocal altruism, indirect reciprocity, and costly signaling theory). However, multilevel selection theories of cultural evolution are consistent with strong reciprocity.
本文提供了有力证据，对主导行为科学和诸多进化思想的自利假设提出了挑战。证据表明，如果受到公平对待，许多人倾向于自愿合作，并惩罚不合作者。我们将这种行为倾向称为“强互惠”，并通过实证表明，在纯粹的自利行为会导致合作彻底崩溃的情况下，它能促成几乎普遍的合作。此外，我们表明，人们愿意惩罚那些对第三方行为不公或在与第三方进行的囚徒困境博弈中背叛的人。这表明，强互惠是执行社会规范（例如食物分享或集体行动）的有力手段。主流的人类合作进化理论（即亲缘选择、互惠利他、间接互惠和代价信号理论）无法将强互惠合理化为一种适应性特征。然而，文化进化的多层次选择理论与强互惠是一致的。
