Reciprocity: Weak or strong? What punishment experiments do (and do not) demonstrate
Reciprocity: Weak or strong? What punishment experiments do (and do not) demonstrate
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DOI：
10.1017/s0140525x11000069
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发表时间：
2012-02-01
影响因子：
29.3
通讯作者：
Guala, Francesco
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Guala, Francesco
经济学家和生物学家提出了两种机制——“强”互惠和“弱”互惠——之间的区别，这可能解释人类社会性的演变。弱互惠理论学家强调长期合作的益处以及使用低成本策略来威慑搭便车者。相比之下，强互惠理论学家声称，即使在一次性和有限重复的博弈中，社会困境博弈中的合作也可通过代价高昂的惩罚机制来维持。为支持这一论断，他们收集了大量有关实验对象愿意自掏腰包惩罚不合作的搭便车者的证据。在本文中，我区分了对实验证据的“狭义”解读和“广义”解读。狭义解读认为，惩罚实验只是在受控实验室条件下衡量心理倾向的有用手段。广义解读则认为，它们复制了一种在实验室之外的“现实世界”情境中也支持合作的机制。我认为，必须结合实验室数据和关于“自然状态下”合作的证据来检验广义解读。尽管有些说法经常被重复，但没有证据表明人类学家所研究的小型平等主义社会中的合作是通过代价高昂的惩罚来实施的。此外，经济和社会历史学家的研究表明，自然状态下的社会困境通常是由协调惩罚、降低其成本并拓展合作视野的制度来解决的。缺乏代价高昂的惩罚的实地证据表明，关于哪些形式的合作能够或不能够通过分散的监管来维持，存在着重要的限制。
Economists and biologists have proposed a distinction between two mechanisms - "strong" and "weak" reciprocity - that may explain the evolution of human sociality. Weak reciprocity theorists emphasize the benefits of long-term cooperation and the use of low-cost strategies to deter free-riders. Strong reciprocity theorists, in contrast, claim that cooperation in social dilemma games can be sustained by costly punishment mechanisms, even in one-shot and finitely repeated games. To support this claim, they have generated a large body of evidence concerning the willingness of experimental subjects to punish uncooperative free-riders at a cost to themselves. In this article, I distinguish between a "narrow" and a "wide" reading of the experimental evidence. Under the narrow reading, punishment experiments are just useful devices to measure psychological propensities in controlled laboratory conditions. Under the wide reading, they replicate a mechanism that supports cooperation also in "real-world" situations outside the laboratory. I argue that the wide interpretation must be tested using a combination of laboratory data and evidence about cooperation "in the wild." In spite of some often-repeated claims, there is no evidence that cooperation in the small egalitarian societies studied by anthropologists is enforced by means of costly punishment. Moreover, studies by economic and social historians show that social dilemmas in the wild are typically solved by institutions that coordinate punishment, reduce its cost, and extend the horizon of cooperation. The lack of field evidence for costly punishment suggests important constraints about what forms of cooperation can or cannot be sustained by means of decentralised policing.