Eyes are on us , but nobody cares : are eye cues relevant for strong reciprocity ? Ernst Fehr and
نویسنده
چکیده
Strong reciprocity is characterized by the willingness to altruistically reward cooperative acts and to altruistically punish norm-violating, defecting behaviours. Recent evidence suggests that subtle reputation cues, such as eyes staring at subjects during their choices, may enhance prosocial behaviour. Thus, in principle, strong reciprocity could also be affected by eye cues. We investigate the impact of eye cues on trustees’ altruistic behaviour in a trust game and find zero effect. Neither the subjects who are classified as prosocial nor the subjects who are classified as selfish respond to these cues. In sharp contrast to the irrelevance of subtle reputation cues for strong reciprocity, we find a large effect of explicit, pecuniary reputation incentives on the trustees’ prosociality. Trustees who can acquire a good reputation that benefits them in future interactions honour trust much more than trustees who cannot build a good reputation. These results cast doubt on hypotheses suggesting that strong reciprocity is easily malleable by implicit reputation cues not backed by explicit reputation incentives.
منابع مشابه
Eyes are on us, but nobody cares: are eye cues relevant for strong reciprocity?
Strong reciprocity is characterized by the willingness to altruistically reward cooperative acts and to altruistically punish norm-violating, defecting behaviours. Recent evidence suggests that subtle reputation cues, such as eyes staring at subjects during their choices, may enhance prosocial behaviour. Thus, in principle, strong reciprocity could also be affected by eye cues. We investigate t...
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(2316 articles) evolution (1701 articles) behaviour Articles on similar topics can be found in the following collections Email alerting service here right-hand corner of the article or click Receive free email alerts when new articles cite this article-sign up in the box at the top Strong reciprocity is characterized by the willingness to altruistically reward cooperative acts and to altruistic...
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Evolutionary psychologists argue that strong reciprocity is primarily shaped by an evolutionary history of repeated interactions in which it was in the self-interest of people to reciprocate favors. For this reason modern humans are hypothesized to respond to variations in all kinds of subtle reputational cues such as human voices in the environment, whether actions take place in the dark or du...
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