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The work of the cross‐cultural behavioural experiments project presented in this book is rooted in the logic of game theory and the practices of experimental economics, and this chapter provides an introduction to the fundamentals of behavioural game theory, and the procedures and conventions of experimental economics. It starts by defining the main social preference terms used – self‐interest, altruism, reciprocity, inequity aversion, and then sketches game theory in broad terms and describes some basic features of experimental design in economics. Seven games that have proved useful in examining social preferences are introduced; these are the Prisoner's Dilemma Game, the Public Goods Game, the Ultimatum Game, the Dictator Game, the Trust Game, the Gift Exchange Game, and the Third‐Party Punishment Game). The games are defined formally, indicating the aspects of social life that they express, and describing behavioural regularities found in experimental studies; these behavioural regularities are then interpreted in terms of preferences for reciprocity, inequity aversion, or altruism. The final sections of the chapter describe some other games anthropologists might find useful, and draw conclusions.

A summary is given of the results obtained from all fifteen field sites of the cross‐cultural behavioural experiments project reported in the book and comparisons are made between them. Two lessons are drawn from the experimental results: first, there is no society in which experimental behaviour is even roughly consistent with the canonical model of purely self‐interested actors; second, there is much more variation between groups than has been previously reported, and this variation correlates with differences in patterns of interaction found in everyday life. The results are thought to bear on fundamental questions about human behaviour and society such as the nature of human motivations, and how these motivations are shaped by the societies in which people live, but the discussion is limited to the implications of the study for rational actor and similar models of human behaviour. The chapter is arranged in eight main sections which: (1) give an account of the cross‐cultural behavioural experiments project, describing the main economics experiments used – the Ultimatum Game (only this game was used at all experimental sites), the Public Goods Game, and the Dictator Game – and the locations and characteristics of the ethnographic studies involved (two each in Ecuador, Mongolia, Papua New Guinea and Tanzania; and one each in Bolivia, Chile, Indonesia, Kenya, Paraguay, Peru, and Zimbabwe); (2) present and analyse the experimental results; (3) attempt to explain differences in behaviour across groups; (4) attempt to explain individual differences in behaviour within groups; (5) discuss local group effects; (6) examine experimental behaviour in relation to everyday life; (7) discuss the research methods used and suggest ways that the between‐group behavioural differences found could have originated as products of patterns of social and economic interactions; and (8) draw conclusions.

It has often been suggested that the foundation for much human cooperation is the widespread food sharing observed among hunter–gatherers. To investigate this proposition, the study reported here enlisted one of the few remaining societies of active nomadic hunter–gatherers – the Hadza of Tanzania (who are one of the most egalitarian societies in the ethnographic literature) – to play two related games: the Ultimatum Game and the Dictator Game. The characteristics of the study population are first described, and then the methods used to conduct the games are outlined and the results presented and analysed in terms of six variables (age, gender, comprehension, numbers of siblings and children, and camp population/size). The Hadza made lower offers in both games than are typical of complex societies, and the offers were lower in small camps than larger ones; these findings contrast with the strong Hadza sharing ethic. Possible interpretations are discussed; these include a combination of greater fear of punishment (for not sharing) in larger camps and a greater desire to escape from constant sharing in small camps, and three other explanations that have been proposed by evolutionary anthropologists for widespread food sharing – tolerated scrounging, delayed reciprocity, and costly signalling.

An analysis of the role of market integration and fairness in the responses of the Orma of northern Kenya in the Ultimatum, Dictator, and Public Goods Games is presented. The Orma are a pastoral–nomadic community who are divided into three sections in the Tana River District and are dependent mainly on cattle, but in increasing numbers are diversifying into trade and wage labour; this research took place among the geographically central Galole Orma. The chapter describes the political economy of the Orma, and the methods used for the study, and presents and analyses the results of the three games, looking at the effects of wage/trade income in the Ultimatum and Dictator Games. The results are consistent with the general finding from the overall cross‐cultural project that shows fairness increasing with market integration. Something appears to trigger fair‐mindedness in association with exposure to market institutions, maybe a higher premium on reputation, and eventually, this norm appears to be internalized, as evidenced by its emergence in the anonymous, one‐shot, economic experiments.

The chapter reports a series of studies comparing sharing behavior, moral judgment, and the negotiation of sharing in the dictator game, a nonstrategic fairness task in behavioral economics. Participants of five age groups of 9-, 12-, 14-, 17-year-olds and adults first made (hypothetical) individual decisions and then negotiated in groups of three persons of the same sex how much to share with an anonymous same-sex other group. Sharing equally was the modal choice across all age groups; the youngest and oldest participants offered somewhat less than the other age groups. Arguments in the group negotiations were scored according to a coding manual. The arguments for both fair offers and offers that deviated from equal splits became increasingly elaborate across age groups; groups that offered less than equal splits provided more and more different arguments. A second study including the same age groups assessed offers in an anonymous individual context and also moral judgments of what was evaluated as the fairest offer in this context. No differences in offers were found compared to the first study; across all age groups the majority of participants evaluated equal sharing as the morally right offer. Offers and fairness judgments were in general found to be highly consistent. However, the discrepancy between the fairness judgment and the actual offer, e.g., offering less than what was evaluated as fair, increased substantially in adolescence and in particular in adulthood.

This chapter develops the view that interpersonal trust cannot be fully understood by the lights of rational decision theory or social norms and preferences. Trust is a dilemma because the person deciding whether to trust must reconcile the conflicting demands of own well-being with the demands of prosociality. This chapter considers three types of social situation of (inter)dependence: the dictator game, which is played unilaterally, the assurance game, which is played bilaterally and simultaneously, and the trust game proper, which is played bilaterally and sequentially. Findings show that the dictator game, which models the situation of the person being trusted, is ill-suited to isolate social preferences. Empirical results may over- or underestimate the willingness to share. A simulation shows that individuals’ social preferences rarely predict the distribution of wealth. Analysis of the assurance game (or “stag hunt”) and the trust game proper yield similar results.

This chapter discusses one of the most fundamental issues that every legal system must address: the form of protection that should be given to legal entitlements, including property rights. The chapter summarizes the debate regarding the choice between property rules and liability rules, and its underlying assumptions. It then shows how behavioral studies offer important considerations that should influence the legal discussion. Generally speaking, psychological studies invite more optimism about people's ability to reach mutual agreement under property rules and suggest that miscalculations of damages under liability rules may be a graver danger than presently realized. These studies caution us against increasing the use of liability rules and lend additional support to the use of property rules when transaction costs are low.

In most laboratory experiments concerning prosocial behavior subjects are fully informed how their decision influences the payoff of other players. Outside the laboratory, for instance when voting for a policy reform proposal, individuals typically have to decide without such detailed knowledge. To assess the effect of information asymmetries on prosocial behavior, we conduct a laboratory experiment with a simple non-strategic interaction. A dictator has only limited knowledge about the benefits his prosocial action generates for a recipient. We observe subjects with heterogenous social preferences, in particular inequalityaverse and efficiency-concerned individuals. While under symmetric information only individuals with the same type of preferences transfer, under asymmetric information different types transfer at the same time. As a consequence and the main finding of our experiment, uninformed dictators behave more prosocially than informed dictators. In an ex-post analysis of our experiment we also find that the differences in behavior under symmetric information are mostly driven by gender: women tend to be more inequality-averse, men tend to be more efficiency-concerned. Yet, both transfer under asymmetric information.

Martin Luther King Jr. hoped for a time when we would judge each other on the content of our characters, not the color of our skin, ethnicity, gender, sexual preference, or country of origin. How can we do that in multicultural worlds, in worlds in which all these differences exist and are marked? How do we assess character in worlds in which there are differences in character and different ideals of human excellence? We propose teaching children what we know about human nature from the wisdom of the ages, from great thinkers like Plato, Hobbes, Hume, Mencius, Xunzi, as well as from child psychology, and economic game theory, the good and the ugly. And we propose some strategies for the moral education of the young that involve inculcating an appreciation of the varieties of moral possibility, and the expectation that there is much to learn from those who are different, and who abide different conceptions of human excellence.

If our concern in interpersonal interest conflicts is to adhere to our moral standards primarily as means to other ends or as unintended consequences, why do we even have such standards? What function do they serve? Chapter 7 suggests that we often invoke our interpersonal moral standards to guide and direct other people’s behavior rather than our own. At the same time, others invoke their standards to guide and direct our behavior. Moral combat. Even propriety morality may be a weapon of social control more than self-control. We rarely need our propriety standards to prod us to act as we feel we should regarding the natural and social order. Instead, we proclaim our propriety standards to get others to act as we think they should, even as they proclaim their standards to get us to act as they think we should.