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Strong reciprocity, human cooperation, and the enforcement of social norms

Fehr, Ernst; Fischbacher, Urs; Gächter, Simon (2002). Strong reciprocity, human cooperation, and the enforcement of social norms. Human Nature, 13(1):1-25.

Abstract

This paper provides strong evidence challenging the self-interest assumption that dominates the behavioral sciences and much evolutionary thinking. The evidence indicates that many people have a tendency to voluntarily cooperate, if treated fairly, and to punish noncooperators. We call this behavioral propensity "strong reciprocity” and show empirically that it can lead to almost universal cooperation in circumstances in which purely self-interested behavior would cause a complete breakdown of cooperation. In addition, we show that people are willing to punish those who behaved unfairly towards a third person or who defected in a Prisoner's Dilemma game with a third person. This suggests that strong reciprocity is a powerful device for the enforcement of social norms involving, for example, food sharing or collective action. Strong reciprocity cannot be rationalized as an adaptive trait by the leading evolutionary theories of human cooperation (in other words, kin selection, reciprocal altruism, indirect reciprocity, and costly signaling theory). However, multilevel selection theories of cultural evolution are consistent with strong reciprocity

Additional indexing

Item Type:Journal Article, refereed, original work
Communities & Collections:National licences > 142-005
Dewey Decimal Classification:Unspecified
Scopus Subject Areas:Life Sciences > Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
Social Sciences & Humanities > Anthropology
Social Sciences & Humanities > Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous)
Social Sciences & Humanities > Social Sciences (miscellaneous)
Social Sciences & Humanities > Sociology and Political Science
Language:English
Date:1 March 2002
Deposited On:10 Oct 2018 08:44
Last Modified:18 Jun 2025 01:40
Publisher:Springer
ISSN:1045-6767
OA Status:Green
Free access at:Publisher DOI. An embargo period may apply.
Publisher DOI:https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-002-1012-7
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  • Content: Published Version
  • Language: English
  • Description: Nationallizenz 142-005

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