Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

The Logic and Location of Strong Reciprocity: Anthropological and Philosophical Considerations

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Fairness, Equity, and Justice

Abstract

In this chapter, we provide a philosophical and anthropological analysis of strong reciprocity. We begin our analysis by outlining the logical argument for strong reciprocity in detail, drawing attention to its most questionable premises. We then address the most critical issue facing strong reciprocity: the lack of ethnographic evidence for strongly reciprocal behavior in the real world, outside of economic games. We conclude that (1) despite some weak premises, the foundational argument for strong reciprocity is logically sound, and (2) while it is very unlikely that strong reciprocity is an artifact entirely limited to experimental settings, it is difficult to detect the behavior in nonexperimental contexts. Lastly, we suggest that while the impulses of strong reciprocity can motivate justice and fairness, one of the reasons that strong reciprocity is difficult to detect in real-world contexts is that cultural forces influence and often limit the manifestation of strong reciprocity impulses.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Alexander, R. (1987). The biology of moral systems. New York, NY: Aldine de Gruyter.

    Google Scholar 

  • Andreoni, J. (1990). Impure altruism and donations to public goods: A theory of warm-glow giving. The Economic Journal, 100(401), 464–477.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Axelrod, R. (1984). The evolution of cooperation. New York, NY: Basic Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Axelrod, R., & Hamilton, W. D. (1984). The evolution of cooperation. Science, 211, 1390–1396.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Baldassarri, D. (2013). Prosocial behavior: Evidence from lab-in-the-field experiments. PLoS One, 8(3), e58750. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3608652/.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Bergmuller, R., & Taboorsky, M. (2010). Animal personality due to social niche specialization. Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 25(9), 504–511.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Boehm, C. (2012). Moral Origins: The Evolution of Virtue, Altruism, and Shame. New York: Basic Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bowles, S., Boyd, R., Matthew, S., & Richerson, P. J. (2012). The punishment that sustains cooperation is often coordinated and costly. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 35(1), 20–21.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Bowles, S., & Gintis, H. (2002). Homo reciprocans. Nature, 415, 125–128.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Bowles, S., & Gintis, H. (2004). The evolution of strong reciprocity: Cooperation in heterogenous populations. Theoretical Population Biology, 65(1), 17–28.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Boyd, R., Gintis, H., & Bowles, S. (2010). Coordinated punishment of defectors sustains cooperation and can proliferate when rare. Science, 328(5978), 617–620.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Boyd, R., Gintis, H., Bowles, S., & Richerson, P. (2003). The evolution of altruistic punishment. PNAS, 100(6), 3531–3535.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Boyd, R., & Richerson, P. J. (2009). Culture and the evolution of human cooperation. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences, 364(1533), 3281–3288.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Burnham, T., & Johnson, D. (2005). The biological and evolutionary logic of human cooperation. Analyse & Kritik, 27, 113–135.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brauer, J., & Hanus, D. (2012). Fairness in non-human primates? Social Justice Research, 25(3), 256. http://scholarworks.gsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1046&context=psych_facpub.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Broz, S. (2002). Good people in an evil time: Portraits of complicity and resistance in the Bosnian war. New York, NY: Other Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cialdini, R. (2006). Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. New York, NY: Harper Business.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cochran, G., & Harpending, H. (2009). The 10,000 year explosion: How civilization accelerated human evolution. New York, NY: Basic Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cushing, P. J. (1998). Competing the cycle of transformation: Lessons form the rites of passage model. Pathways: The Ontario Journal of Experimental Education, 9(5), 7–12.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dawkins, R. (2006). The selfish gene. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Original work published in 1976).

    Google Scholar 

  • de Quervain, D. J., Fischbacher, U., Treyer, V., Schellhammer, M., Schnyder, U., & Buck, A. (2004). The neural basis of altruistic punishment. Science, 305, 1254–1258.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Debove, S., Baumard, N., & Andre, J. B. (2016). On the evolutionary origins of equity. BioRxiv. http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/052290.

  • Diekmann, A., Jann, B., Przepiorka, W., & Wehrl, S. (2014). Reputation and the evolution of cooperation in anonymous online markets. American Sociological Review, 79(1), 65–85.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Doyle, J. (2013). Survey of time preference, delay discounting models. Judgment and Decision making, 8(2), 116–135.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dugatkin, L. A. (1999). Cheating monkeys and citizen bees. New York, NY: Simon & Shuster.

    Google Scholar 

  • Engel, C. (2011). Dictator games: A meta study. Experimental Economics, 14(4), 583–610.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fehr, E., Fischbacher, U., & Gachter, S. (2002). Strong reciprocity, human cooperation, and the enforcement of social norms. Human Nature, 13(1), 1–25.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Fehr, E., & Gachter, S. (2001). Cooperation and punishment in public goods experiments. American Economic Review, 90(4), 980.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fischbacher, U., Gachter, S., & Fehr, E. (2001). Are people conditionally cooperative? Evidence from a public goods experiment. Economic Letters, 71(3), 397–404.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fehr, E., & Gachter, S. (2002). Altruistic punishment in humans. Nature, 415, 6868.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fehr, E., & Fischbacher, U. (2003). The nature of human altruism. Nature, 425, 785–791.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fehr, E., & Rockenbach, B. (2003). Detrimental effects of sanctions on human altruism. Nature, 422, 137–140.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fehr, E., & Henrich, J. (2003). Is strong reciprocity a maladaptation? On the evolutionary foundations of human altruism. In P. Hammerstein (Ed.), Genetic and Cultural Evolution of Cooperation (pp. 55–82). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fehr, E., & Fischbacher, U. (2004). The nature of human altruism. Nature, 425, 785–791.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fehr, E., & Leibbrandt, A. (2011). A field study on cooperativeness and impatience in the tragedy of the commons. Journal of Public Economics, 95(10), 1144.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Feldman, R. (2015). Mutual influences between child emotion regulation and parent-child reciprocity support development across the first 10 years of life: Implications for developmental psychopathology. Development and Psychopathology, 27(1), 1007–1023.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Fischbacher, U., Gachter, S., & Fehr, E. (2001). Are people conditionally cooperative? Evidence from a public goods experiment. Economics Letters, 71(3), 397–404.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gachter, S., & Herrmann, B. (2009). Reciprocity, culture, and human cooperation: Previous insights and a new cross-cultural experiment. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society Biological Sciences, 364, 791–806.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Gintis, H. (2000a). Strong reciprocity and human sociality. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 206, 169–179.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Gintis, H. (2000b). Group selection and human prosociality. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 7(1), 215–219.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gintis, H. (2003). The hitchhiker’s guide to altruism: Genes, culture, and the internalization of norms. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 220(4), 407–418.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gintis, H. (2011). Gene-culture coevolution and the nature of human sociality. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society Biological Sciences, 366, 878–888.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Gintis, H., Bowles, S., Boyd, R., & Fehr, E. (2003). Explaining altruistic behavior in humans. Evolution and Human Behavior, 24, 153–172.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gintis, H., & Fehr, E. (2012). The social structure of cooperation and punishment. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 35(1), 28–29.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Gintis, H., Henrich, J., Bowles, S., Boyd, R., & Fehr, E. (2008). Strong reciprocity and the roots of morality. Social Justice Research, 21(2), 241–253.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Grafen, A. (1985). A geometric view of relatedness. Oxford Survey of Evolutionary Biology, 2, 28–89.

    Google Scholar 

  • Grusec, J. E., & Kuczynski, L. (1997). Parenting and Children’s internationalization of values: A handbook of contemporary theory. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons.

    Google Scholar 

  • Guala, F. (2012). Reciprocity: Weak or strong? What punishment experiments do (and do not) demonstrate. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 35(1), 1–59.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Guiso, L., Sapienza, P., & Zingales, L. (2009). The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 124(3), 1095–1131.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hagen, E., & Hammerstein, P. (2006). Game theory and human evolution: A critique of some recent interpretations of experimental games. Theoretical Population Biology, 69, 339–348.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Hamilton, W. D. (1964). The genetical evolution of social behavior I & II. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 7(1), 1–52.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Henrich, J., & Boyd, R. (2001). Why people punish defectors: Weak conformist transmission can stabilize costly enforcement of norms in cooperative dilemmas. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 208, 79–89.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Henrich, J., & Chudek, M. (2012). Understanding the research program. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 35(1), 29–30.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Henrich, J., Boyd, R., Bowles, S., Camerer, C., Fehr, E., & Gintis, H. (2004). Foundations of Human Sociality: Economic Experiments and Ethnographic Evidence from Fifteen Small-Scale Societies. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Henrich, J., Heine, S. J., & Norenzayan, A. (2010). The weirdest people in the world? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 33, 61–83.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Henrich, J., Boyd, R., Camerer, C., Fehr, E., Gintis, H., McElreath, R., Alvard, M., Barr, A., Ensminger, J., Henrich, N.S., Hill, K., Gil-White, F., Gurven, M., Marlowe, F.W., Patton, J.Q., & Tracer, D. (2005). ‘Economic man’ in cross-cultural perspective: Behavioral experiments in 15 small-scale societies. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 28(6), 795–815.

    Google Scholar 

  • Henrich, J., McElreath, R., Barr, A., Ensminger, J., Barrett, C., Bolyanatz, A., … Zilker, J. (2006). Costly punishment across human socieites. Science, 312, 1767–1770.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hsu, M., Anen, C., & Quartz, S. R. (2008). The right and the good: Distributive justice and neural encoding of equity and efficiency. Science, 320, 1092–1095.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Inglis, F., West, S., & Buckling, A. (2014). An experimental study of strong reciprocity in bacteria. Biological Letters, 10, 20131069.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jordan, J., Hoffman, M., Bloom, P., & Rand, D. (2016). Third-party punishment as a costly signal of trustworthiness. Nature, 530, 473–476.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Kaltwasser, L., Hildebrandt, A., Wilhelm, O., & Sommer, W. (2016). Behavioral and neuronal determinants of negative reciprocity in the ultimatum game. Social Cognition and Affective Neuroscience, 11(11), 1608–1617.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Knoch, D., Nitsche, M. A., Fischbacher, U., Eisenegger, C., Pascual-Leone, A., & Fehr, E. (2008). Studying the neurobiology of social interaction with transcranial direct current stimulation—The example of punishing unfairness. Cerebral Cortex, 18, 1987–1990.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Li, Y., & Yamagishi, T. (2014). A test of the strong reciprocity model: A relationship between cooperation and punishment. Shinrigaku Kenkyu, 85(1), 100–105.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Lee, R. (2013). The Dobe Ju/‘hoansi. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. (Original work published 1984).

    Google Scholar 

  • Leland, K. N., & Brown, G. R. (2002). Sense and nonsense: Evolutionary perspectives on human behavior. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Luo, Q., Nakic, M., Wheatley, T., Ritchell, R., Martin, A., & Blair, R. J. (2006). The neural basis of implicit moral attitude—An IAT study using event-related fMRI. NeuroImage, 30, 1449–1457.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Marlowe, F. W., Berbesque, C., Barr, A., Barrett, C., Bolyanatz, A., Camilo, J., … Tracer, D. (2008). More ‘altruistic’ punishment in larger societies. Proceedings of the Royal Society Biological Sciences, 275, 587–592.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mathew, S., & Boyd, R. (2011). Punishment sustains large-scale cooperation in prestate warfare. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 108(28), 11375–11380.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Mauss, M. (1990). The gift: The form and reason for exchange in archaic societies. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company. (Original work published in 1950).

    Google Scholar 

  • Maynard Smith, J. (1964). Group selection and kin selection. Nature, 201, 1144–1147.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mendez, M. F. (2009). The neurobiology of moral behavior: Review and neuropsychiatric implications. CNS Spectrums, 14(11), 608–620.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Moll, J., Zahn, R., de Oliveira-Souza, R., Krueger, F., & Grafman, J. (2005). The neural basis of human moral cognition. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 6, 799–809.

    Google Scholar 

  • Moll, H., & Tomasello, M. (2007). Cooperation and human cognition: The Vygotskian intelligence hypothesis. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society Biological Sciences, 362(1480), 639–648.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Nisbett, R. E., & Cohen, D. (1996). Culture of honor: The psychology of violence in the south. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nowak, M., & Sigmund, K. (1998). Evolution of indirect reciprocity. Nature, 393, 573–577.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Nowak, M., Tarnita, C. E., & Wilson, E. O. (2010). The evolution of eusociality. Nature, 466(7310), 1057–1062.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Pascual, L., Rodrigues, P., & Gallardo-Pujol, D. (2013). How does morality work in the brain? A functional structural perspective of moral behavior. Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience, 7(65), 1–8.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pisor, A. C., & Fessler, D. M. (2012). Importing social preferences across contexts and the pitfall of over-generalization across theories. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 35(1), 34–35.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Price, M. E. (2008). The resurrection of group selection as a theory of human cooperation. Social Justice Research, 21, 228–240.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Radder, H. (2003). The philosophy of scientific experimentation. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Rawls, J. (1971). A theory of justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rustagi, D., Engel, S., & Kosfeld, M. (2010). Conditional cooperation and costly monitoring explain success in forest commons management. Science, 330(6006), 961–965.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Sahlins, M. (1972). Stone Age Economics. Chicago, IL: Aldine-Atherton.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sanfey, A. G., Rilling, J. K., Aaronson, J. A., Nystom, L. E., & Cohen, J. D. (2003). The neural basis of economic decision-making in the ultimatum game. Science, 300, 1755–1758.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Schneider, F., & Fehr, E. (2010). Eyes are watching but nobody cares: The irrelevance of eye cues for strong reciprocity. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London: B-Biological Sciences, 277, 1315–1323.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sober, E., & Wilson, D. S. (1998). Unto others: The evolution and psychology of unselfish behavior. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sosis, R. (2006). Religious behaviors, badges, and bans: Signaling theory and the evolution of religion. In P. McNamara (Ed.), Where god and science meet: How brain and evolutionary studies Alter our understanding of religion (pp. 61–68). Westport, CT: Praeger.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sterelny, K. (2011). From hominins to humans: How sapiens became behaviourally modern. Philosophical Transaction of the Royal Society:B-Biological Sciences, 366(1566), 809–822.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tabibnia, G., Satpute, A. B., & Lieberman, M. D. (2008). The sunny side of fairness: Preference for fairness activates reward circuitry (and disregarding unfairness actives self-control circuitry). Psychological Science, 19, 339–347.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Tracer, D. (2003). Selfishness and fairness in economic and evolutionary perspective: An experimental economic study in Papua New Guinea. Current Anthropology, 44(3), 432–443.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Trivers, R. (1971). The evolution of reciprocal altruism. The Quarterly Review of Biology, 46(1), 35–57.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Trivers, R. (2006). Reciprocal altruism: 30 years later. In P. M. Kappeler & C. P. van Shaik (Eds.), Cooperation in primates and humans (pp. 67–84). New York, NY: Springer-Verlag Berlin.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Watanabe, T., Takezawa, M., Nakawake, Y., Kunimatsu, A., Yamasure, H., Nakamura, M., … Masuda, N. (2014). Two distinct neural mechanisms underlying indirect reciprocity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 111(11), 3990–3995.

    Google Scholar 

  • West, S. A., Mouden, C. E., & Gardner, A. (2011). Sixteen misconceptions about the evolution of cooperation in humans. Evolution and Human Behavior, 32, 231–262.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Williams, G. (1966). Adaptation and Natural Selection. Princteon, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wilson, D. S., & Sober, E. (1994). Reintroducing group selection to the human behavioral sciences. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 17(4), 585–654.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wynne-Edwards, V. C. (1962). Animal dispersion in relation to social behavior. Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wynne-Edwards, V. C. (1964). Group selection and kin selection: Reply to Maynard Smith. Nature, 201, 1147.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yamagishi, T., Horita, Y., Mifune, N., Hashimoto, H., Li, Y., Shinada, M., … Simunovic, D. (2012). Rejection of unfair offers in the ultimatum game is no evidence of strong reciprocity. Proceedings of the National academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 109(50), 20364.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zahavi, A. (1975). Mate selection—A selection for a handicap. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 53, 205–214.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anthropology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA

    Jordan Kiper & Richard Sosis

Authors
  1. Jordan Kiper
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Richard Sosis
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jordan Kiper .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Health and Behavioral Sciences, University of Colorado Denver, Denver, Colorado, USA

    Meng Li

  2. Departments of Health and Behavioral Sciences and Anthropology, University of Colorado Denver, Denver, Colorado, USA

    David P. Tracer

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Kiper, J., Sosis, R. (2017). The Logic and Location of Strong Reciprocity: Anthropological and Philosophical Considerations. In: Li, M., Tracer, D. (eds) Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Fairness, Equity, and Justice. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58993-0_7

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation