Foundations of Human Sociality: Economic Experiments and Ethnographic Evidence from Fifteen Small-Scale Societies

What motives underlie the ways humans interact socially? Are these the same for all societies? Are these part of our nature, or influenced by our environments? Over the last decade, research in experimental economics has emphatically falsified the textbook representation of Homo economicus. Literally hundreds of experiments suggest that people care not only about their own material payoffs, but also about such things as fairness, equity and reciprocity. However, this research left fundamental questions unanswered: Are such social preferences stable components of human nature; or, are they modulated by economic, social and cultural environments? Until now, experimental research could not address this question because virtually all subjects had been university students, and while there are cultural differences among student populations throughout the world, these differences are small compared to the full range of human social and cultural environments. A vast amount of ethnographic and historical research suggests that people's motives are influenced by economic, social, and cultural environments, yet such methods can only yield circumstantial evidence about human motives. Combining ethnographic and experimental approaches to fill this gap, this book breaks new ground in reporting the results of a large cross-cultural study aimed at determining the sources of social (non-selfish) preferences that underlie the diversity of human sociality. The same experiments which provided evidence for social preferences among university students were performed in fifteen small-scale societies exhibiting a wide variety of social, economic and cultural conditions by experienced field researchers who had also done long-term ethnographic field work in these societies. The findings of these experiments demonstrated that no society in which experimental behaviour is consistent with the canonical model of self-interest. Indeed, results showed that the variation in behaviour is far greater than previously thought, and that the differences between societies in market integration and the importance of cooperation explain a substantial portion of this variation, which individual-level economic and demographic variables could not. Finally, the extent to which experimental play mirrors patterns of interaction found in everyday life is traced. The book starts with a succinct but substantive introduction to the use of game theory as an analytical tool and its use in the social sciences for the rigorous testing of hypotheses about fundamental aspects of social behaviour outside artificially constructed laboratories. The results of the fifteen case studies are summarized in a suggestive chapter about the scope of the project. Contributors to this volume - Joseph Henrich, Department of Anthropology, Emory University Robert Boyd, Department of Anthropology, UCLA Samuel Bowles, University of Siena and University of Massachusetts, Amherst Colin Camerer, Division of Humanities and Social Sciences, California Institute of Technology Ernst Fehr, Insitute for Empirical Research, University of Zurich Herbert Gintis, Santa Fe Institute, University of Massachusetts, and New York University Richard McElreath, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Davis John Q. Patton, Washington State University Natalie Smith, School of Public Health, Harvard University Frank Marlowe, Department of Anthropology, Harvard University Michael Gurven, Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico David P. Tracer, Department of Anthropology, University of Colarado at Denver Francisco J. Gil-White, Solomon Asch Center for the Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict, University of Pennsylvania Abigail Barr, Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford Jean Ensminger, Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences, California Institute of Technology Kim Hill, Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico Mike Gurven, Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico Michael S. Alvard, Department of Anthropology, Texas A&M University