Towards a unified theory of reciprocity

In a unified theory of human reciprocity, the strong and weak forms are similar because neither is biologically altruistic and both require normative motivation to support cooperation. However, strong reciprocity is necessary to support cooperation in public goods games. It involves inflicting costs on defectors; and though the costs for punishers are recouped, recouping costs requires complex institutions that would not have emerged if weak reciprocity had been enough.     

Reciprocity and uncertainty

Guala points to a discrepancy between strong negative reciprocity observed in the lab and the way cooperation is sustained "in the wild." This commentary suggests that in lab experiments, strong negative reciprocity is limited when uncertainty exists regarding the players' actions and the intentions. Thus, costly punishment is indeed a limited mechanism for sustaining cooperation in an uncertain environment.     

In medio stat virtus: theoretical and methodological extremes regarding reciprocity will not explain complex social behaviors

Guala contests the validity of strong reciprocity as a key element in shaping social behavior by contrasting evidence from experimental games to that of natural and historic data. He suggests that in order to understand the evolution of social behavior researchers should focus on natural data and weak reciprocity. We disagree with Guala's proposal to shift the focus of the study from one extreme of the spectrum (strong reciprocity) to the other extreme (weak reciprocity). We argue that the study of the evolution of social behavior must be comparative in nature, and we point out experimental evidence that shows that social behavior is not cooperation determined by a set of fixed factors. We argue for a model that sees social behavior as a dynamic interaction of genetic and environmental factors.     

The social structure of cooperation and punishment

The standard theories of cooperation in humans, which depend on repeated interaction and reputation effects among self-regarding agents, are inadequate. Strong reciprocity, a predisposition to participate in costly cooperation and the punishment, fosters cooperation where self-regarding behaviors fail. The effectiveness of socially coordinated punishment depends on individual motivations to participate, which are based on strong reciprocity motives. The relative infrequency of high-cost punishment is a result of the ubiquity of strong reciprocity, not its absence.     

Is strong reciprocity really strong in the lab, let alone in the real world?

We argue that standard experiments supporting the existence of "strong reciprocity" do not represent many cooperative situations outside the laboratory. More representative experiments that incorporate "earned" rather than "windfall" wealth also do not provide evidence for the impact of strong reciprocity on cooperation in contemporary real-life situations or in evolutionary history, supporting the main conclusions of the target article.     

小学儿童“互反可逆性“发展的研究

本文运用成分分析法研究经典的皮亚杰有关儿童“互反可逆性”的理论。     

Reciprocating (More) Specifically to You: The Role of Benefactor's Identifiability on Direct and Upstream Reciprocity

Research suggests that benefiting from someone's voluntary, intentional, costly effort encourages reciprocal prosocial behavior, as well as promoting upstream reciprocity, that is, increases reciprocal actions by the recipient for the benefit of an unrelated third party. The current study examines the role of the identifiability of the benefactor in determining the extent to which people engage in direct and upstream reciprocity. Results of three studies reveal that while an identified benefactor tends to engender greater direct reciprocal reactions than an unidentified one, this strong reaction toward the identified benefactor does not hold to the same extent when upstream reciprocity is considered (regardless of identification of the third party). On the other hand, when the benefactor is unidentified, levels of direct and upstream reciprocity remain similar. Moderated‐mediation analysis suggests that ethical commitment associated with the universal norm of reciprocity explains the decrease in prosociality between reactions toward the benefactor himself or herself and toward a third party under the identified condition. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Importing social preferences across contexts and the pitfall of over-generalization across theories

Claims regarding negative strong reciprocity do indeed rest on experiments lacking established external validity, often without even a small "menu of options." Guala's review should prompt strong reciprocity proponents to extend the real-world validity of their work, exploring the preferences participants bring to experiments. That said, Guala's approach fails to differentiate among group selection approaches and glosses over cross-cultural variability.     

The spiral of distrust: (Non‐)cooperation in a repeated trust game is predicted by anger and individual differences in negative reciprocity orientation

This study investigated state anger and individual differences in negative reciprocity orientation as predictors of individuals' willingness to cooperate with strangers. In order to observe real behaviour, we used a trust game that was played over six periods. In the trust game, a first player (sender) determines how much of a certain endowment she/he wants to share with a second player (trustee), who then can give something back. We varied whether participants received feedback [feedback (yes, no)] about the trustee's behavioural decision (amount sent back). Supporting our hypotheses, the results suggest that feedback compared with no feedback about the trustee's behaviour increased anger. Specifically, information about low back transfers triggered anger and non‐cooperation in return. Importantly, participants with a strong negative reciprocity orientation reported higher levels of anger and were less willing to cooperate with the trustee compared with those with low negative reciprocity orientation. Moreover, even when anger was low, individuals with a strong negative reciprocity orientation were less willing to cooperate compared with those with a low negative reciprocity orientation. Thus, negative reciprocity orientation seems to arouse a spiral of distrust. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Proximate and ultimate causes of punishment and strong reciprocity

While admirable, Guala's discussion of reciprocity suffers from a confusion between proximate causes (psychological mechanisms triggering behaviour) and ultimate causes (evolved function of those psychological mechanisms). Because much work on "strong reciprocity" commits this error, I clarify the difference between proximate and ultimate causes of cooperation and punishment. I also caution against hasty rejections of "wide readings" of experimental evidence.     

Reciprocity and Discrimination: An Experiment of Hindu‐Muslim Cooperation in Indian Slums

This article shows that indirect positive reciprocity triggered by experiencing short and superficial cooperation with outgroups' individual members reduces discrimination of other members of the same group. The field research combined a lab‐in‐the‐field experiment and a survey conducted in the slums of Mumbai, an Indian city notorious for Hindu‐Muslim violence. After the treatment manipulated expectations of cooperative behavior, ethnically heterogeneous groups produced as much public goods in a public goods game as homogeneous groups. This positive experience radically reduced Hindu subjects' discriminatory attitudes towards the Muslim minority after the experiment. The effect was equally strong among voters of two extremist parties implicated in ethnic riots. The survey compared reciprocity with alternative explanations of why people discriminate against some, but not other ethnic groups. Indirect positive reciprocity and intergroup contact are associated with less, and relative size of the outgroup with more discriminatory attitudes.     

"He loves me, he loves me not . . . ": uncertainty can increase romantic attraction

This research qualifies a social psychological truism: that people like others who like them (the reciprocity principle). College women viewed the Facebook profiles of four male students who had previously seen their profiles. They were told that the men (a) liked them a lot, (b) liked them only an average amount, or (c) liked them either a lot or an average amount (uncertain condition). Comparison of the first two conditions yielded results consistent with the reciprocity principle. Participants were more attracted to men who liked them a lot than to men who liked them an average amount. Results for the uncertain condition, however, were consistent with research on the pleasures of uncertainty. Participants in the uncertain condition were most attracted to the men-even more attracted than were participants who were told that the men liked them a lot. Uncertain participants reported thinking about the men the most, and this increased their attraction toward the men.     

JOHN MILBANK's THEOLOGY OF THE "GIFT" AND CALVIN's THEOLOGY OF GRACE: A CRITICAL COMPARISON1

In his theology of the Gift, John Milbank advocates a theology of “reciprocity” between God and humanity, involving “active” rather than “passive” reception of the divine gift. Calvin and other Reformation theologians are criticized by Milbank as demeaning the role of the human partner by advocating “passivity” in the reception of grace. This essay compares Milbank's theology of the Gift with Calvin's theology of grace, showing how Calvin overcomes the schematic options of “passivity” or “reciprocity” in the divine‐human relation, all the while holding much more in common with Milbank's concerns about sanctification and participation than has generally been recognized.     

The strategic logic of costly punishment necessitates natural field experiments, and at least one such experiment exists

Costly punishment's scarcity "in the wild" does not belie strong reciprocity theory as Guala claims. In the presence of strong reciprocators, strategic defectors will cooperate and sanctioning will not occur. Accordingly, natural field experiments are necessary to assess a "wide" reading of costly punishment experiments. One such field experiment exists, and it supports the hypothesis that costly punishment promotes cooperation.     

计算式互惠机制探讨——认知和动机的物种比较

与灵长类动物相比, 人类社会中存在广泛的互惠行为, 这种广泛性表现为人类具有独特的计算式互惠。本文从计算式互惠的认知和动机机制两方面对人类儿童和灵长类动物进行比较, 以期从近因机制的角度为人类互惠行为的复杂性提供解释依据。未来研究需要重视从个体发展和个体差异的视角探寻认知和动机因素对计算式互惠的影响, 并注重从互动双方各自的角度对各影响因素进行区别和分析, 从而更全面地提供有关人类互惠近因机制的证据。     

When and Why People Evaluate Negative Reciprocity as More Fair Than Positive Reciprocity

If you are kind to me, I am likely to reciprocate and doing so feels fair. Many theories of social exchange assume that such reciprocity and fairness are well aligned with one another. We argue that this correspondence between reciprocity and fairness is restricted to interpersonal dyads and does not govern more complex multilateral interactions. When multiple people are involved, reciprocity leads to partiality, which may be seen as unfair by outsiders. We report seven studies, conducted with people from the United States, in which participants were asked to evaluate situations involving resource distribution in contexts such as economic games, government, and the workplace. Specifically, we find that equal resource distribution in multilateral interactions is seen as more fair than engaging in reciprocity. We also find that negative reciprocity is seen as more fair than positive reciprocity in these multilateral situations because positive reciprocity is perceived as based in favoritism. We rule out alternative explanations and demonstrate that there are contexts where favoritism is not viewed as unfair. These findings are important for theories of fairness and reciprocity as they demonstrate the central role of perceived partiality in the evaluation of multi‐party resource allocation.     

Blood, sex, personality, power, and altruism: factors influencing the validity of strong reciprocity

It is argued that the generality of strong reciprocity theory (SRT) is limited by the existence of anonymous spontaneous cooperation, maintained in the absence of punishment, despite free-riding. We highlight how individual differences, status, sex, and the legitimacy of non-cooperation need to be examined to increase the internal and ecological validity of SRT experiments and, ultimately, SRT's external validity.     

"Pray for those who mistreat you": effects of prayer on anger and aggression

Although some religious teachings have been used to justify aggression, most religious teachings promote peace in human affairs. Three experiments tested the hypothesis that praying for others brings out the more peaceful side of religion by reducing anger and aggression after a provocation. In Experiment 1, praying for a stranger led provoked participants to report less anger than control participants who thought about a stranger. In Experiment 2, provoked participants who prayed for the person who angered them were less aggressive toward that person than were participants who thought about the person who angered them. In Experiment 3, provoked participants who prayed for a friend in need showed a less angry appraisal style than did people who thought about a friend in need. These results are consistent with recent evolutionary theories, which suggest that religious practices can promote cooperation among nonkin or in situations in which reciprocity is highly unlikely.     

The personal norm of reciprocity

Reciprocity is here considered as an internalized social norm, and a questionnaire to measure individual differences in the internalized norm of reciprocity is presented. The questionnaire, Personal Norm of Reciprocity (PNR), measures three aspects of reciprocity: positive reciprocity, negative reciprocity, and beliefs in reciprocity. The PNR has been developed and tested in two cultures, British and Italian, for a total of 951 participants. A cross‐cultural study provides evidence of good psychometric properties and generalizability of the PNR. Data provide evidence for criterion validity and show that positive and negative reciprocators behave in different ways as a function of the valence (positive or negative) of the other's past behaviour, the type of feasible reaction (reward versus punishment), and the fairness of their reaction. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.