Department of Economics, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637.
Development Research Group, The World Bank, Washington DC 20433;
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2018 Nov 6;115(45):11385-11392. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1804639115.
We report experimental findings on how individuals from different cultures solve a repeated coordination game of common interest. The results overturn earlier findings that fixed pairs are almost assured to coordinate on an efficient and cooperative equilibrium. Subjects in the prior experiments were US university students, whereas the subjects in our study are men drawn from high and low castes in rural India. Most low-caste pairs quickly established an efficient and cooperative convention, but most high-caste pairs did not. The largest difference in behavior occurred when a player suffered a loss because he had tried to cooperate but his partner did not: In this situation, high-caste men were far less likely than low-caste men to continue trying to cooperate in the next period. Our interpretation is that for many high-caste men, the loss resulting from coordination failure triggered retaliation. Our results are robust to controls for education and wealth, and they hold by subcaste as well as by caste status. A survey we conducted supports the ethnographic evidence that more high-caste than low-caste men prefer to retaliate against a slight. We find no evidence that caste differences in trust or self-efficacy explain the caste gap in cooperation in our experiment. Our findings are of general interest because many societies throughout the world have cultures that lead individuals to (mis)perceive some actions as insults and to respond aggressively and dysfunctionally.
我们报告了关于不同文化背景的个体如何解决共同利益的重复协调博弈的实验结果。这些结果推翻了之前的研究发现，即固定配对几乎可以确保在有效和合作的均衡点上达成一致。之前实验中的参与者是美国大学生，而我们研究中的参与者是来自印度农村的高种姓和低种姓男性。大多数低种姓配对很快就建立了有效的合作惯例，但大多数高种姓配对却没有。当一个参与者因为试图合作但他的伙伴没有合作而遭受损失时，行为上的最大差异就出现了：在这种情况下，高种姓男性比低种姓男性在下一个时期继续合作的可能性要小得多。我们的解释是，对于许多高种姓男性来说，协调失败导致的损失引发了报复。我们的结果在控制了教育和财富因素后仍然成立，并且在次级种姓和种姓地位上都成立。我们进行的一项调查支持了人种志证据，即与低种姓男性相比，更多的高种姓男性更喜欢对轻微的冒犯进行报复。我们没有发现证据表明信任或自我效能感的种姓差异可以解释我们实验中合作的种姓差距。我们的发现具有普遍意义，因为世界上许多社会的文化导致个体（错误）地将某些行为视为侮辱，并做出攻击性和功能失调的反应。
