"Economic man" in cross-cultural perspective: behavioral experiments in 15 small-scale societies.
Researchers from across the social sciences have found consistent deviations from the predictions of the canonical model of self-interest in hundreds of experiments from around the world. This research, however, cannot determine whether the uniformity results from universal patterns of human behavior or from the limited cultural variation available among the university students used in virtually all prior experimental work. To address this, we undertook a cross-cultural study of behavior in ultimatum, public goods, and dictator games in a range of small-scale societies exhibiting a wide variety of economic and cultural conditions. We found, first, that the canonical model - based on self-interest - fails in all of the societies studied. Second, our data reveal substantially more behavioral variability across social groups than has been found in previous research. Third, group-level differences in economic organization and the structure of social interactions explain a substantial portion of the behavioral variation across societies: the higher the degree of market integration and the higher the payoffs to cooperation in everyday life, the greater the level of prosociality expressed in experimental games. Fourth, the available individual-level economic and demographic variables do not consistently explain game behavior, either within or across groups. Fifth, in many cases experimental play appears to reflect the common interactional patterns of everyday life.
Henrich
Joseph
J
Department of Anthropology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322, USA. jhenric@emory.edu
Boyd
Robert
R
Bowles
Samuel
S
Camerer
Colin
C
Fehr
Ernst
E
Gintis
Herbert
H
McElreath
Richard
R
Alvard
Michael
M
Barr
Abigail
A
Ensminger
Jean
J
Henrich
Natalie Smith
NS
Hill
Kim
K
Gil-White
Francisco
F
Gurven
Michael
M
Marlowe
Frank W
FW
Patton
John Q
JQ
Tracer
David
D
D000533:Altruism; D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D003469:Culture; D006801:Humans; D011582:Psychological Theory; D012919:Social Behavior