Culture does account for variation in game behavior

Nature, 2008

Humans often cooperate in public goods games 1-3 and situations ranging from family issues to global warming 4,5 . However, evolutionary game theory predicts 4,6 that the temptation to forgo the public good mostly wins over collective cooperative action, and this is often also seen in economic experiments 7 . Here we show how social diversity provides an escape from this apparent paradox. Up to now, individuals have been treated as equivalent in all respects 4,8 , in sharp contrast with real-life situations, where diversity is ubiquitous. We introduce social diversity by means of heterogeneous graphs and show that cooperation is promoted by the diversity associated with the number and size of the public goods game in which each individual participates and with the individual contribution to each such game. When social ties follow a scale-free distribution 9 , cooperation is enhanced whenever all individuals are expected to contribute a fixed amount irrespective of the plethora of public goods games in which they engage. Our results may help to explain the emergence of cooperation in the absence of mechanisms based on individual reputation and punishment 10-12 . Combining social diversity with reputation and punishment will provide instrumental clues on the self-organization of social communities and their economical implications.

Foundations of Human Sociality, 2004

2009

Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2005

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. .

2012

Game theory has been useful for understanding risk-taking and cooperative behavior. In the present study, subjects played the Hawk-Dove game with simulated and embodied (robotic) neu-ral agents which used a neurobiologically plausible model of action selection and adaptive behaviors. Subjects had their serotonin levels temporarily altered through acute tryptophan depletion (ATD). The traditional assumption for subject data from Game-theory-ATD or human robot interaction (HRI) studies is that all participants come from the same underlying distribution or same group. We used probabilistic graphical models in order to determine potential subgroup affiliations based on the subjects' responses while playing the Hawk-Dove game. The results from the models indicate subgroups within a subject population exist. We find that two-group, one that tends toward cooperation and the other that tends toward aggression , best describes the effect of subject behavior in response to ATD and embodim...

2004

This paper reports the results of the Ultimatum Game (UG), Dictator Game (DG) and Public Goods Game (PGG) played among the Tsimane, a group of forager-horticulturalists living in the Bolivian Amazon. Game results differ significantly from those commonly reported among modern, westernized populations. Without a long history of anonymous interactions, it is highly suspect whether the Tsimane or other traditional populations play economic games under assumptions of anonymity and one-shot exposure. Employing a behavioral ecology framework, I test predictions that differential market exposure, costs of giving, and experience with cooperation can help explain much of the variance in game outcomes. While these factors sometimes act as important predictors of game behavior, the most significant predictor is village membership. Implications for understanding the role of markets, frequent interaction with strangers, and payoffs to cooperation in daily life can help us better understand cross-cultural variation in pro-social behavior.

Data from three bargaining games-the Dictator Game, the Ultimatum Game, and the Third-Party Punishment Game-played in 15 societies are presented. The societies range from US undergraduates to Amazonian, Arctic, and African hunter-gatherers. Behaviour within the games varies markedly across societies. The paper investigates whether this behavioural diversity can be explained solely by variations in inequality aversion. Combining a single parameter utility function with the notion of subgame perfection generates a number of testable predictions. While most of these are supported, there are some telling divergences between theory and data: uncertainty and preferences relating to acts of vengeance may have influenced play in the Ultimatum and Third-Party Punishment Games; and a few subjects used the games as an opportunity to engage in costly signalling.

Synopsis: We analyze social dynamics in a continuous population where randomly matched individuals have to choose between two pure strategies only (`cooperate' (C) and`not cooperate' (NC)). Individual payoffs associated with the possible outcomes of each interaction may differ across groups, depending on the speci®c social and cultural context to which each agent belongs. In particular, it is assumed that three sub-populations are initially present, `framing' the game according to the prisoner's dilemma (PD), assurance game (AG) and other regarding (OR) payoff con®gurations, respectively. In other words, we assume that common knowledge about the payoffs of the game is`culturally-speci®c'. In this context, we examine both the adoption process of strategies C and NC within each sub-population and the diffusion process of`types' (PD, AG and OR) within the overall community. On the basis of an evolutionary game-theoretic approach, the paper focuses on the problem of coexistence of PD, AG and OR groups as well as of`nice' (C) and`mean' (NC) strategies. We show that coexistence between C and NC is possible in the heterogeneous community under examination, even if it is ruled out in homogeneous communities where only one of the three types is present.

2000

This paper considers the role of reciprocity rules in various strategic settings. After distinguishing four typical categories of social interaction, the paper examines three forms of reciprocity constraints. An Ž. ideal rule of perfect incentive alignment ''structural reciprocity'' serves as a benchmark for the analysis of a ''golden rule'' of reciprocity, characterized by a mechanical linking of one player's strategy to that of the other player; and a ''silver rule'' of stochastic reciprocity, characterized by a probabilistic symmetry in the relationship between the players.

Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 2016

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