One of the big challenges to the perfectly rational value maximizer beloved of economic models is the existence of altruistic punishers--people who will, in experiments, spend their own money to punish people htey perceive as having acted unfairly. These people do so even though there is no particular likelihood of seeing those people again, suggesting that this is some sort of genetically programmed response, found in a significant fraction of the population, that helps quell opportunistic behaviour. Now there's some evidence for the genetic explanation: apparently, identical twins tend to play the same strategy in ultimatum games.
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I'm not sure I buy the presumption that this is necessarily irrational behavior from an individual perspective. Striking back at unfairness tends to produce a reputation for toughness that will have a deterrent effect on potential future abuse. That deterrent effect might be worth the investment in retribution. I think Ocean's 11 makes this point fairly nicely:
"Linus: The last guy they caught cheating in here? Benedict not only sent him up for 10 years, he had the bank seize his house and then he bankrupted...
Rusty: His brother-in-law's tractor dealership. Yeah, I heard."
It didn't work out for Terry Benedict in that instance, but you can see why that would be a valuable reputation for a casino owner to have--or rationally attempt to create.
Interesting if true. It would also be interesting to know if this impulse was evenly distributed in the population at large, or not. If not - if certain regions contain more "altruistic punishers" than others, it might explain why some regions prove so resistant to Western-style capitalism. What we libertarians see as self-destructive hyper-envy might in fact be an adaptive mechanism to conditions that no longer prevail.
If my daughters split a chocolate bar and one of the pieces is a half gram smaller than the other piece, the amount of displeasure the child with the smaller piece has is orders of magnitude greater than the pleasure they would get from the chocolate.
The best way to combat the sibling rivalry mentioned by Larry is to have one child do the splitting and the other child choose first. Make sure to explain this before the split occurs. Works for cutting cake, pies, etc. and DRASTICALLY reduces the fuss. All the unfairness is taken out of the equation.
There is no question that humans have epigenetic rules that stipulate a zero-sum game mentality.
That's where politicians come in. To reinforce the fact that people are not happy.
See "Via Freedom to Coercion: The Emergence of Costly Punishment"
on pages 1905-1907 of issue 316 of Science
Here's the abstract:
"In human societies, cooperative behavior in joint enterprises is
often enforced through institutions that impose sanctions on defectors.
Many experiments on so-called public goods games have shown that
in the absence of such institutions, individuals are willing to punish
defectors, even at a cost to themselves. Theoretical models confirm that
social norms prescribing the punishment of uncooperative behavior are
stable -- once established, they prevent dissident minorities from
spreading. But how can such costly punishing behavior gain a foothold
in the population? A surprisingly simple model shows that if individuals
have the option to stand aside and abstain from the joint endeavor,
this paves the way for the emergence and establishment of cooperative
behavior based on the punishment of defectors. Paradoxically, the freedom
to withdraw from the common enterprise leads to enforcement of social
norms. Joint enterprises that are compulsory rather than voluntary are
less likely to lead to cooperation."
My take on this is that we're looking at the genetics of the evolution
of cooperation.
Quoting from the paper:
"In joint enterprises, free-riding individuals who do not contribute,
but who exploit the efforts of others, fare better than those who pay
the cost of contributing. If successful behavior spreads, for instance
through imitation, these defectors will eventually take over. Punishment
reduces the defectors' payoff, and thus may solve the social dilemma.
However, because punishment is costly, it also reduces the punishers'
payoff. This raises a "second-order social dilemma": Costly punishment
seems to be an altruistic act, given that individuals who contribute but
do not punish are better off than the punishers."
So in other words we have some kind of community effort from which
everyone benefits but to which not everyone contributes. Name those
who benefit but don't contribute "free-riders." Name those who spend
time and effort on the enterprise "cooperators."
Turns out with only free-riders and cooperators and despite the fact
that everyone would be better off if they cooperated, free-riding
wins out and the community effort is doomed.
Now throw in a third strategy, "punishers." Punishers cooperate but
they also punish free-riders. Now we have a mix of free-riders,
cooperators, and punishers. As long as there are enough punishers
the community effort will succeed, but ultimately the mix is unstable,
first cooperators come to dominate and then free-riders dominate and
then the joint effort falls apart.
Throw in a fourth strategy, "disengagement". Those who disengage neither
contribute to the joint effort nor benefit from it. Surprisingly with this
mix of four strategies, free-riding, cooperating, punishing, and
disengagement, joint efforts become practical. Most people will
end up being cooperators or punishers with only a few disengaged and
free-riders.
It's counterintuitive because most people wouldn't guess that disengagement
inhibits free-riding. The key message to take away is that any effort
to force everyone to contribute to a community effort will in the long run
be unstable and paradoxically actually promote free-riding.
The twin study is provocative because it suggests that these basic strategies
may be partly genetically hard-wired, so that we are actually born with
a tendency one way or another.
Rex wrote: The best way to combat the sibling rivalry mentioned by Larry is to have one child do the splitting and the other child choose first. Make sure to explain this before the split occurs. Works for cutting cake, pies, etc. and DRASTICALLY reduces the fuss. All the unfairness is taken out of the equation.
...until you encounter some smart little future lawyer who deliberately cuts the cake lopsided on several ocassions, observes the other sibling grabbing the larger piece each time, and then submits it to your as proof positive that said sibling is a greedy little grubber and needs to be taught a lesson.
My guess is that depending on how long a relationship is envisioned to last – people will behave differently? In case of a one-night stand I would expect more people to go for the unfair win than that fair loss. But in case where real life games are presumed as “infinite” (going into marriage or into a new business venture) – it would make sense for people to block any sort of deal which they presume as unfair in fear that this might develop into a trend? I would not call these people altruistic punishers but rather long term thinkers? They seem to value ethics?
Either way – in this case also the researchers stress that any genes that they have identified account for less than the environmental influences.
Here an interesting story from the-other-animal kingdom:
One species that demonstrates reciprocal altruism is the vampire bat. These nocturnal mammals feed on the blood of larger animals while they are sleeping. But food is relatively scarce and bats regularly return home to their roosts hungry. If a bat goes more than 48 hours without blood, it will begin to starve.
If this happens, other bats will regurgitate blood into its mouth until it is nursed back to health. For this system to work, bats that have received blood must return the favour when the roles are reversed.
"These animals seem very capable of keeping track of associations over long periods of time," says Gerald Wilkinson, a zoologist at the University of Maryland. Wilkinson has also shown that bats will not share blood easily with new members of their group, suggesting that these blood-sharing associations are built up over time.
This suggests that bats may be able to keep track of their blood donations. The most obvious benefit of this skill would be to detect and recognise cheats, in order to make sure that they are denied blood in future.
Wilkinson suggests that blood-sharing between vampire bats may owe its origins to the extinction at the end of the last ice age of several important species of North American mammal.
The disappearance of the horse, camel and giant sloth from the continent would have drastically reduced the food supply for vampire bats. These conditions may have favoured the survival of bats that shared.
It's just possible that a similarly monumental period of environmental upheaval was responsible for the emergence of human altruism.
For anyone who hasn't seen it, there's increasing evidence that we enjoy punishing cheaters. So really, paying for the privilege might be no more irrational than paying for anything else we enjoy.
Given that most identical twins are raised in the same household, experience similar interactions, etc., how does an otherwise sophisticated person assume that the bulk of the difference is attributable to genetics?
Half Canadian, I had the same initial thought, but they control for it in the test by comparing identical twins to fraternal twins (where fraternal twins would have been brought up with the family, but don't have the identical genes).
I'm surprised no-one has brought up the idea of free will with this yet. If our genes determine our preferences, and our preferences determine our choices, then we don't really have free will. We are just slaves to our genes.
I spent 6 years in Asia, and one of my overall conclusions about the differences with the US is that over and over, the US has somehow worked its way to cooperative equlibria in ways that Asians haven't. A small example - lines in women's restrooms. In the US, there's more likely to be one central line (like for bank tellers), which is more efficient but less defensible (you can't literally get your body in front of all those stalls at once). In Hong Kong at least, there's a line at each stall (and they pound on the door and yell if they think you're too slow).
In China now, to get ready for the Olympics, they've designated the 11th of each month as 'stand in line' day (because the 11 looks like two people waiting in line). They're trying to slowly introduce the habit of lines rather than shoving to the front, but it doesn't seem individually rational to them to stand in line, when shoving ahead of someone may possibly get you served faster.
In game theory, many cooperative behaviors don't seem individually rational, but living in a society where people have reached those cooperative solutions can be much, much nicer. Perhaps the "punishers" understand this and are working towards that solution, somewhat along the lines of what Mark Amerman said earlier.
But we shouldn't get too worried about the genetic aspect. The most ardent 'enforcers' I knew were those who grew up in Asia but had lived in the US. Chinese are notoriously disgusting in their bathroom habits (as you learn from using 'public' bathrooms there), and no one complained louder than other Chinese that had gotten used to conditions elsewhere. The same for littering, spitting, etc.
Coorperative equilibria can develop and be learned. I suppose the Japanese by now (after all those generations of living on an island) might have more of a genetic pre-disposition, but anyone can adapt.
I'm with Dan Miller that some people enjoy punishing cheaters. It's possible to take pride in being a son of a bitch in some circumstances. I once paid for a lawyer (well my employer paid for the lawyer, but it came out of my unit's budget) and iniated a court case against a non-paying customer who refused to answer phone calls and regularly lied about making partial payments. His attorney called and told me that it would put the non-payng firmn into bankruptcy, which stimulated me even more to go ahead. I did not do anything like this to other non-paying customers (it was a very bad business) who would at least get on the phone and tell you truthfully that they couldn't pay. But the liar infuraited me, and I just chalked up the expense as my contribution to social welfare, as it meant one less lying cheat in my business.
"One of the big challenges to the perfectly rational value maximizer beloved of economic models..."
The biggest challenge is that the real-life perfectly rational value maximizer generally behaves differently than economic models predict she will. For economists, this is a problem with the value maximizer. For the rest of us, it's why we generally pat economists on the head and tell them to run along.
anonymouse-
...until you encounter some smart little future lawyer who deliberately cuts the cake lopsided on several ocassions
Every "future lawyer" surely needs to hear someone say, "Tough Titties!" at least once in his/her life.
Otherwise, you get a "John Edwards"... :o)
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