title: "Economic man" in cross-cultural perspective: behavioral experiments in 15 small-scale societies.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Anthropology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322, USA. jhenric@emory.edu
authors.forename: Joseph
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Henrich
authors.forename: Robert
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Boyd
authors.forename: Samuel
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Bowles
authors.forename: Colin
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Camerer
authors.forename: Ernst
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Fehr
authors.forename: Herbert
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Gintis
authors.forename: Richard
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: McElreath
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Alvard
authors.forename: Abigail
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Barr
authors.forename: Jean
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Ensminger
authors.forename: Natalie Smith
authors.initials: NS
authors.lastname: Henrich
authors.forename: Kim
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Hill
authors.forename: Francisco
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Gil-White
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Gurven
authors.forename: Frank W
authors.initials: FW
authors.lastname: Marlowe
authors.forename: John Q
authors.initials: JQ
authors.lastname: Patton
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Tracer
mesh_terms: D000533:Altruism; D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D003469:Culture; D006801:Humans; D011582:Psychological Theory; D012919:Social Behavior