Abstract
Both economists and biologists have developed repeated interaction models of cooperation in social dilemmas with groups of self-regarding individuals. Repeated interactions do provide opportunities for cooperative individuals to discipline defectors, and may be effective in groups of two individuals. However, these models are inadequate for groups of larger size, making plausible assumptions about the information available to each individual. Moreover, even presupposing extraordinary cognitive capacities and levels of patience among the cooperating individuals, it is unlikely that a group of more than two individuals would ever adopt the cooperative equilibria that the models have identified, and almost certainly, if it were to adopt one, its members would abandon it in short order. Though intended as models of decentralized interaction, the models by which self-regarding Homo economicus is said to cooperate implicitly presume implausible levels of coordination such as might in the real world be provided by social norms. The inadequacy of these models, coupled with extensive experimental and other empirical evidence of human cooperation suggests that other-regarding preferences in the context of social norms that facilitate and direct human cooperation must be part of an adequate explanation.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Arrow KJ (1971) Political and economic evaluation of social effects and externalities. In: Intriligator MD (ed) Frontiers of quantitative economics. North Holland, Amsterdam, pp 3–23
Arrow KJ, Debreu G (1954) Existence of an equilibrium for a competitive economy. Econometrica 22(3):265–290
Arrow KJ, Hahn F (1971) General competitive analysis. Holden-Day, San Francisco
Aumann RJ (1987) Correlated equilibrium and an expression of Bayesian rationality. Econometrica 55:1–18
Aumann RJ, Brandenburger A (1995) Epistemic conditions for Nash equilibrium. Econometrica 65(5):1161–1180
Axelrod R, Hamilton WD (1981) The evolution of cooperation. Science 211:1390–1396
Basu K (1994) The traveler's dilemma: paradoxes of rationality in game theory. Am Econ Rev 84(2):391–395
Benedict R (1934) Patterns of culture. Houghton Mifflin, Boston
Bernheim BD (1984) Rationalizable strategic behavior. Econometrica 52(4):1007–1028
Bhaskar V, Obara I (2002) Belief-based equilibria: the repeated prisoner's dilemma with private monitoring. J Econ Theory 102:40–69
Binmore KG (1993) Game theory and the social contract: playing fair. MIT Cambridge, MA
Binmore KG (1998) Game theory and the social contract: just playing. MIT Cambridge, MA
Binmore KG (2005) Natural justice. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Blau P (1964) Exchange and power in social life. John Wiley, New York
Bowles S (2004) Microeconomics: behavior, institutions, and evolution. Princeton University Press, Princeton
Bowles S (2006) Group competition, reproductive leveling, and the evolution of human altruism. Science 314:1669–1672
Bowles S, Gintis H (1993) The revenge of Homo economicus: contested exchange and the revival of political economy. J Econ Perspect 7(1):83–102
Bowles S, Gintis H (2004) The evolution of strong reciprocity: cooperation in heterogeneous populations. Theor Popul Biol 65:17–28
Bowles S, Hammerstein P (2003) Does market theory apply to biology? In: Hammerstein P (ed) Genetic and cultural evolution of cooperation. MIT, Cambridge, MA, pp 153–165.
Bowles S, Choi Jung-kyoo, Hopfensitz A (2003) The co-evolution of individual behaviors and social institutions. J Theor Biol 223:135–147
Boyd R, Richerson PJ (1985) Culture and the evolutionary process. University of Chicago Press, Chicago
Brown DE (1991) Human universals. McGraw-Hill, New York
Carlsson H, van Damme E (1993) Global games and equilibrium selection. Econometrica 61(5):989–1018
Carpenter J, Bowles S, Gintis H, Hwang SH (2009) Strong reciprocity and team production. J Econ Behav Organ
Choi J-K, Bowles S (2007) The coevolution of parochial altruism and war Science 318(26): 636–640
Debreu G (1959) Theory of value. Wiley, New York
Dreber A, Rand DG, Fudenberg D, Nowak MA (2008) Winners don’t punish. Nature 452:348–351
Durkheim E (1933 [1902]) The division of labor in society. The Free Press, New York
Ely JC, Välimäki J (2002) A robust folk theorem for the prisoner's dilemma. J Econ Theory 102:84–105
Fletcher JA, Zwick M (2006) Unifying the theories of inclusive fitness and reciprocal altruism. Am Nat 168(2):252–262
Fudenberg D, Maskin E (1986) The folk theorem in repeated games with discounting or with incomplete information. Econometrica 54(3):533–544
Fudenberg D, Tirole J (1991) Game theory. MIT Cambridge, MA
Fudenberg D, Levine K (1997) The theory of learning in games. MIT Cambridge, MA
Fudenberg D, Levine K, Maskin E (1994) The folk theorem with imperfect public information. Econometrica 62:997–1039
Gintis H (1976) The nature of the labor exchange and the theory of capitalist production. Rev Radic Polit Econ 8(2):36–54.
Gintis H (2000) Strong reciprocity and human sociality. J Theor Biol 206:169–179
Gintis H (2002)Some implications of endogenous contract enforcement for general equilibrium theory. In: Petri F, Hahn F (eds) General equilibrium: problems and prospects. Routledge, London, pp 176–205
Gintis H (2003) The hitchhiker’s guide to altruism: genes, culture, and the internalization of norms. J Theor Biol 220(4):407–418
Gintis H (2009) The bounds of reason: game theory and the unification of the behavioral sciences. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ
Gintis H (2009) Game theory evolving, 2nd edn. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ
Hassan FA (1973) Determination of the size, density, and growth rate of hunting-gathering populations. In: Polgar S (ed) Population, ecology, and social evolution. Mouton, The Hague, pp 27–52
Harsany JC (1967) Games with incomplete information played by bayesian players, Parts I, II, and III. Behav Sci 14:159–182, 320–334, 486–502
Herrmann B, Thöni C, Gächter S (2008) Anti-social punishment across societies. Science 319:1362–1367
Ingrao B, Israel Giorgio (1990) The invisible hand: economic equilibrium in the history of science. MIT, Cambridge
Kirman A (1989) The intrinsic limits of modern economic theory: the emperor has no clothes. Econ J 99(395):126–139
Kreps DM (1990) A course in microecoomic theory. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ
Kreps DM, Wilson R (1982) Sequential equilibria. Econometrica 50(4):863–894
Kuhn HW (1953) Extensive games and the problem of information. In Kuhn HW, Tucker AW (eds) Contributions to the theory of games, Vol 2 of Annals of mathematics studies. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ pp 193–216
Laffont JJ (2000) Incentives and political economy. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Levine DK (1998) Modeling altruism and spitefulness in experiments. Rev Econ Dyn 1(3): 593–622
Lewis D (1969) Conventions: a philosophical study. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA
Luce R (1957) Raiffa HD Games and decisions. Wiley New York
Mailath GJ,Morris S (2006) Coordination failure in repated games with almost-public monitoring. Theor Econ 1:311–340
Marlowe F (2005) Hunter-gatherers and human evolution. Evol Anthropol 14:54–67
Milgrom PR, Roberts J (1990) Rationalizability, learning, and equilibrium in games with strategic complementarities. Econometrica 58(6):1255–1277
Nachbar JH (1990) Evolutionary selection dynamics in games: convergence and limit properties. Int J Game Theory 19:59–89
Nash JF (1950) Equilibrium points in n-Person games. Proc Nat Acad Sci 36:48–49
Parsons T, Shils E (1951) Toward a general theory of action. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA
Pearce D (1984) Rationalizable strategic behavior and the problem of perfection. Econometrica 52:1029–1050
Piccione M (2002) The repeated prisoner’s dilemma with imperfect private monitoring. J Econ Theory 102:70–83
Platteau J-P, Seki E (2001) Community arrangements to overcome market failure: pooling groups in Japanese fisheries. In: Hayami M, Hayami Y (eds) Communities and markets in economic development. Oxford University Press, Oxford pp 344–402
Price GR (1970) Selection and covariance. Nature 227:520–521
Queller DC (1992) A general model for kin selection. Evolution 42(2):376–380.
Rabin M (1993) Incorporating fairness into game theory and econometrics. Am Econ Rev 83(5):1281–1302
Samuelson L, Zhang J (1992) Evolutionary stability in asymmetric games. J econ Theory 57(2):363–391
Sekiguchi T (1997) Efficiency in repated prisoner’s dilemma with private monitoring. J Econ Theory 76:345–361
Selten R (1975) Re-examination of the perfectness concept for equilibrium points in extensive games. Int J Game Theory 4:25–55
Shubik M (1959) Strategy and market structure: competition, oligopoly, and the theory of games. Wiley New York
Sonnenschein H (1972) Market excess demand functions. Econometrica 40:549–563.
Stiglitz J (1987) The causes and consequences of the dependence of quality on price. J Econ Lit 25:1–48.
Sugden R (1986) The economics of rights, co-operation and welfare. Basil Blackwell, Oxford
Taylor M (1976) Anarchy and cooperation. Wiley, London
Taylor P, Jonker L (1978) Evolutionarily stable strategies and game dynamics. Math Biosci 40:145–156
Tirole J (1988) The theory of industrial organization. MIT, Cambridge, MA
Tirole J (1990) The theory of industrial organization. MIT Cambridge, MA
Trivers RL (1971) The evolution of reciprocal altruism. Q Rev Biol 46:35–57
Vives X (2005) Complementarities and games: new developments. J Econ Lit 43:437–479
Wiessner P (2005) Norm enforcement among the Juh́oansi Bushmen: a case of strong reciprocity? Hum Nat 16(2):115–145.
Young HP (2006) Strategic learning and its limits. Oxford Uniersity Press, Oxford
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank E. Somanathan for initial conversations that stimulated this research and Robert Boyd, Jessica Flack, Eric Maskin, and Robert Sugden for comments on an earlier version. This chapter draws extensively on material in our book, A Cooperative Species.We would also like to thank the European Science Foundation and the Behavioral Sciences Program of the Santa Fe Institute for research support.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Bowles, S., Gintis, H. (2009). Beyond Enlightened Self-Interest: Social Norms, Other-Regarding Preferences, and Cooperative Behavior. In: Levin, S. (eds) Games, Groups, and the Global Good. Springer Series in Game Theory. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-85436-4_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-85436-4_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-85435-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-85436-4
eBook Packages: Business and EconomicsEconomics and Finance (R0)