Reciprocity, culture and human cooperation: previous insights and a new cross-cultural experimentIntroductionThe public goods gameFactors that influence cooperationStrong reciprocity and cultural backgroundAntisocial punishment across societiesSocio-demographic influences on strong reciprocityConcluding remarksEndnotes1In all the laboratory experiments we discuss, participants, depending on their decisions, earned considerable amounts of money. Thus, the laboratory allows observing real decision making under controlled circumstances. See Friedman and Sunder ...Endnotes1In all the laboratory experiments we discuss, participants, depending on their decisions, earned considerable amounts of money. Thus, the laboratory allows observing real decision making under controlled circumstances. See Friedman and Sunder ...EndnotesReferencesdoi: 10.1098/rstb.2008.0275, 791-806364 2009 Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B Simon Gächter and Benedikt Herrmann and a new cross-cultural experimentReciprocity, culture and human cooperation: previous insights Supplementary data lhttp://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/suppl/2009/02/17/364.1518.791.DC1.htm "Data Supplement"Referenceshttp://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/364/1518/791.full.html#related-urls Article cited in: http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/364/1518/791.full.html#ref-list-1 This article cites 151 articles, 17 of which can be accessed freeRapid responsehttp://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/letters/submit/royptb;364/1518/791 Respond to this articleSubject collections (1199 articles)behaviour  Articles on similar topics can be found in the following collectionsEmail alerting service hereright-hand corner of the article or click Receive free email alerts when new articles cite this article - sign up in the box at the top http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/subscriptions go to: Phil. Trans. R. Soc. BTo subscribe to This journal is © 2009 The Royal Society on May 4, 2010rstb.royalsocietypublishing.orgDownloaded fromReviewReciprocity, culture and human cooperation:previous insights and a newcross-cultural experimentSimon Ga¨chter1,2,3,*and Benedikt Herr mann11Centre of Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham,Sir Clive Granger Building, University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK2CESifo, Poschingerstrasse 5, 81679 Munich, Germany3IZA, Institute for the Study of Labor, Schaumburg-Lippe-Strasse 5-9, 53113 Bonn, GermanyUnderstanding the proximate and ultimate sources of human cooperation is a fundamental issue inall behavioural sciences. In this paper, we review the experimental evidence on how people solvecooperation problems. Existing studies show without doubt that direct and indirect reciprocity areimportant determinants of successful cooperation. We also discuss the insights from a large literatureon the role of peer punishment in sustaining cooperation. The experiments demonstrate that manypeople are ‘strong reciprocators’ who are willing to cooperate and punish others even if there are nogains from future cooperation or any other reputational gains. We document this in new one-shotexperiments, which we conducted in four cities in Russia and Switzerland. Our cross-culturalapproach allows us furthermore to investigate how the cultural background influences strongreciprocity. Our results show that culture has a strong influence on positive and in especially strongnegative reciprocity. In particular, we find large cross-cultural differences in ‘antisocial punishment’of pro-social cooperators. Further cross-cultural research and experiments involving different socio-demographic groups document that the antisocial punishment is much more widespread thanpreviously assumed. Understanding antisocial punishment is an important task for future researchbecause antisocial punishment is a strong inhibitor of cooperation.Keywords: human cooperation; strong reciprocity; public goods experiments; culture;antisocial punishment1. INTRODUCTIONMany important collective problems that humandecision makers face are characterized by a conflict ofinterest between individual and group benefit. The‘tragedy of the commons’ (Hardin 1968) is probablythe best known example. Each individual farmer has anincentive to put as many cattle on the common meadowas possible. The tragic consequence may be over-grazing from which all farmers suffer. Collectively, allfarmers would be better off if they were able toconstrain the number of cattle that grazes on thecommons. Yet, each individual farmer is better off byletting their cattle graze. Collective welfare is jeopar-dized by individual greed in such diverse areas aswarfare; cooperative hunting and foraging; environ-mental protection; tax compliance; voting; the partici-pation in collective actions such as demonstrations,strikes, embargoes and consumer boycotts; the volun-tary provision of public goods; donations to charities;teamwork; collusion between firms; and so on.However, despite this bleak prediction, humans oftenmanage to avoid the tragedy of the commons andachieve high levels of cooperation. This holds forhunter-gatherer societies to complex modern nationstates, which would not exist without large-scalecooperation. Thus, understanding cooperation is animportant challenge for all social sciences but alsofor evolutionary biology, because it needs to explainhow natural and cultural evolution can lead to coope-ration (Hammerstein 2003; Gardner & West 2004;Henrich & Henrich 2007; We st et al. 2007).This paper reviews existing evidence and presentsnovel cross-cultural results from systematic experi-mental investigations on how people solve cooperationproblems. We believe that sound empirical knowledgeis an important input for the development of proximateand ultimate theories of cooperation. Laboratoryexperiments are probably the best tool for studyingcooperation empirically. The reason is that in the fieldmany factors are operative at the same time. Thelaboratory allows for a degree of control that is oftennot feasible in the field.1,2Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B (2009) 364, 791–806doi:10.1098/rstb.2008.0275Published online 12 December 2008One contribution of 11 to a Theme Issue ‘Group decision making inhumans and animals’.Electronic supplementary material is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2008.0275 or via http://journals.royalsociety.org.* Author and address for correspondence: Centre of Decision Researchand Experimental