·      Male vs Female Investment

o   People used to think that male and female had the exact same incentives

o   In the 1970s, realized that incentives are in many ways misaligned

o   Females have nine month investment, and then four years where you have to provide constant resources and attention for caretaking. The mother has to perform this and the father cannot perform this

o   Male goal: get more mates

o   Female goal: get more investment

o   Females look for resources and commitment

o   Males look for fertility

·      Male vs female preferences (and an experiment showing this)

o   Male usually older, female usually younger

o   Males look for short term versus females look for long term

o   Experiment: Clark and Hatfield, on a college campus

§  Ask people want to go to dinner, go back to apartment, want to sleep with me

§  Females and males: 50% will go out to dinner

§  Females don’t really go back to apartment, men say they will

§  No females say the will sleep with them, even more men say they will

o   Men at every time point want to have more sexual partners than women do, and women less likely to have sex after less time knowing the man

o   Worse for man if woman is unloyal, because there can be a question if the man is the dad

o   Men have more affairs than women, but females engage in this behavior as well

o   Women do mostly at 40, men do mostly at 60- change over a lifetime or a cultural change

o   Men are more concerned about sexual infidelity, versus deep emotional infidelity, women care about the opposite

§  Both experience physiological symptoms when finding out each one they care about

o   Buss and Schmitt 1993

o   For short term partners, men want more promiscuous person

o   If looking for long term partner, want not promiscuous and not sexually experienced

o   Female orgasm frequency, higher when with higher male income qualities. Probability of organism increases the richer your man is

o   Also possibility more relaxed when married richer or rich men tend to marry younger women

o   Berscheid and Walster 1978

o   Universal Attractiveness?

o   Showed pictures of all around the world

o   There is tremendous agreement that all over the world there is an innate component to assessing attractiveness

o   But different parts of culture and adornments is quite variable around the world

o   Scheib Gangestad and Thornhill 1999

o   True symmetry predicted better by attractiveness rating than by symmetry rating

o   We have an automatic mechanism that sees symmetry and extracts that information as this person is attractive

o   True symmetry is predicted by attractiveness of half-face, means symmetry is correlated with other things

o   Why symmetry?

§  Reasonable conjecture: symmetry indicates health, good development. A little bit of evidence for this.

§  One study shows that breast cancer is slightly more likely in individuals who have asymmetric breasts

§  Overall evidence is inconsistent

o   Ultimate: signs of normal genes and development

o   Proximate: preference for familiar, the more you see something the more you tend to like it

o   Perrett et al 1994

o   Signs of femininity make people more attractive

o   Anderson et al 1992

o   Nelson and Morrison 2005

o   For most of history, resources were scarce, so heavier women would be more attractive, because it would pay off to have a woman with more

o   Cultures with scarcer resources find heavier women more attractive

o   Men prefer women that are slightly heavier when they are hungry

o   Stephen Coetzee and Perrett 2011

o   Get better skin tone from eating vegetables than tanning

-people can recognize the better skin tone but not know why

·      Ovulatory Cycle and Mate Preference

o   Women are sensitive to symmetry when they are at peak ovulation

o   Lap dancers make more tips when they are at the peak of their cycle

o   Women dress more sexually when they are more fertile

o   For the key few days of he month, women think this is the good time to engage in infidelity. While rest of the month maintain resource commitment

o   Lieberman et al 2010

o   High fertility talk more to mom on cell phone, when low on fertility take more to dad on cell phone

·      The Biology of Pair bonding

o   Reviewed in young and wang 2004

o   The prairie vole- after mate dies, will never mate again

o   The montane vole-not interested in monogamous relationships at all

o   For females: oxytocin is the neuropeptide critical for female bond to male

o   For males: its vasopressin which makes the bond towards the female

o   Binding of AAV in basil ganglia. Meadow voles are less gregarious. If you perform genetic manipulation on meadow voles, they start to behave like prairie vole

In biology, a pair bond is the strong affinity that develops in some species between themales and females in a pair, potentially leading to breeding. Pair-bonding is a term coined in the 1940s^[1] that is frequently used in sociobiology and evolutionary psychology circles. The term often implies either a lifelong socially monogamous relationship or a stage of mating interaction in socially monogamous species. It is sometimes used in reference to human relationships.

Monogamous voles, such as prairie voles, have significantly greater density and distribution of vasopressin receptors in their brain when compared to polygamous voles. These differences are located in the ventral forebrain and the dopamine-mediated reward pathway.

Both vasopressin and dopamine act in this region to coordinate rewarding activities such as mating, and regulate selective affiliation. These species specific differences have shown to correlate with social behaviors, and in monogamous prairie voles are important for facilitation of pair bonding

·      Oxytocin and Pair Bonding

o   Reviewed in young and wang 2004

o   Recognition is impaired without oxytocin

o   There is a link in the basil ganglia between recognition sites and reward/dopamine sites

o   Oxytocin and vasopressin facilitate communication that recognizes and delivers reward: what pair bonding is about, getting a good feeling when you recognize the partner that you mated with

o   Walum et al 2008

§  People have twice the level of relationship crisis if they have 2 alleles of vasopressin receptor 1a gene

§  Also less likely to be married even if cohabitating

o   Men tend to get rush of vasopressin to brain during orgasm, women tend to get rush of oxytocin to the brain

o   Activation in dopaminergic targets within basal ganglia

o   The experience of breast feeding releases a lot of oxytocin in women

·      Oxytocin and Trust

o   Kosfeld et al 2005

o   People make different allocations with oxytocin

o   If you take a snort of it, it makes you more trusting

o   The bonds of trust we build are built on pair bonding foundations

·      Oxytocin and theory of mind

o   Better at recognizing emotion in people’s eyes when you have a dose of oxytocin

o   Helps with social interactions

o   If you bring people into the lab that have dogs- either play with dog or not allowed to look at dog for half hour

o   People that play with dog have much more oxytocin, this effect is strongest with people that owned dogs longest

o   Domes et al 2007

o   Geneticists went into asia and looked at variations of y chromosome

o   Anomalous cluster that led to specific version of y chromosome occupying total swath of genetic material, more than expected

o   Turns out it’s Genghis khan’s y chromosome, he had 100s of wives, had he spent several decades across asia raping and pillaging

o   From an evolutionary perspective, rape and pillage strategy has an enormous impact on genetic stock

o   Berscheid 1983

o   Unexpected facilitation: positive emotion

o   Unexpected disruption: negative emotion

o   Expected facilitation or disruption: no emotion

§  When people behave as expected, bringing flowers every afternoon, doesn’t have an impact on relationship

o   Gottman & Levenson

§  Can predict which relationships will succeed and which will fail

§  Looked at

ú  Conversational style

ú  Facial expressions

ú  “4 horsemen of apocalypse”

·      Criticism

·      Defensiveness

·      Stonewalling

·      Contempt

§  Can predict early divorces with negative affect

§  Can predict later divorces with positive affect

§  80-90% accuracy just through conversation and facial features in the lab

·      Superbowl XXXIV, 2004

o   Boston Globe “anatomy of a riot”

o   Drunk students pour out onto the streets

o   Soon there is chaos

o   Horrible behaviors would not occur in absence of the crowd

·      Radio Quito 1949

o   Interrupted regularly scheduled program to say that aliens were killing people in NJ

o   Played the same joke in Ecuador

o   People ran up to the hills to fight the aliens

o   Very upset, killed everyone

In February 1949, Leonardo Paez and Eduardo Alcaraz produced a Spanish-language version of Welles's 1938 script for Radio Quito inQuito, Ecuador. The broadcast set off panic in the city. Police and fire brigades rushed out of town to engage the supposed alien invasion force. After it was revealed that the broadcast was fiction, the panic transformed into a riot. Hundreds attacked Radio Quito and El Comercio, a local newspaper that had participated in the hoax by publishing false reports of unidentified objects in the skies above Ecuador in the days preceding the broadcast. The riot resulted in at least six deaths, including those of Paez's girlfriend and nephew. Paez moved to Venezuela after the incident

o   Katie Krautworst Le Roy, NY 2002

o   Developed twitch spasms, started spreading around her high school

o   18 students developed it

o   a lot of the girls were cheerleaders and in early adolescent years

o   hysteria: one person’s behavior at a psychological level is infecting other people

o   2002: 10 students 5 cheerleaders suffer non epileptic seizures and fainting spells

o   1965: a girls school in England. Some girls complain of dizziness. Within hours, 85 girls faint

o   1952: 165 members of tigerettes cheerleading squad fainted in first half of football game

o   Tanganyika Laughter Epidemic

§  1962

§  three girls hear a joke and start laughing

§  95/159  pupils become affected lasting a few hours to 16 days

§  laughing spreads to home towns

§  14 schools and approximately 1000 people affected

o   1. emergent properties

§  when a rule interacts with other people using the rule, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, a phenomenon emerges that isn’t present in the isolated instance of the rule alone

§  An emergent behavior or emergent property can appear when a number of simple entities (agents) operate in an environment, forming more complex behaviors as a collective.

o   2. Social influence

§  we have mechanisms where we respond to the presence of others

o   Francis Galton’s ox

§  Noticed that most people are bad at guessing the weight of animals at livestock auctions, but if you put all guesses together people are pretty good

§  787 attendees of a livestock exhibition attempted to guess its weight for a prize

§  each wrote guess on a ticket

§  the average guess was 1197 pounds

§  the ox weighed weighed 1198 pounds

§  nobody guessed as close as the average was

o   the uss scorpion was lost at sea

§  several experts asked to make a best guess about its location

§  make experts work separately

§  then average their guesses

§  naval officer john craven combined their guesses to forma collective guess different from all the individual guesses

§  ship found 220 yards from spot

o   who wants to be a millionaire

§  smart friend gets right answer 65% all of the time

§  audience vote gets answer right 91% of the time

o   Vul and Pashler 2008

§  What percentage of the world’s airports are in the US?

§  An average of two of your answers will most likely be a better guess than either of your answers

§  1. Diverse information

§  2. Independent opinions

§  3. No systematic bias

§  4. Many people

o   Prediction Markets

§  Can aggregate bets together and get a good prediction

§  Presidential election predictions

o   Where there is bias, it gets amplified

§  Kalish, Griffiths, & Lewandowsky 2007

§  Over time you learn the rule why particular width given at certain time

§  First you learn the pattern

§  Then you guess the pattern

§  Your guesses are fed to the next person in sequence

§  If rule is changed they have a bias of what the rule should be

Cultural transmission of information plays a central role in shaping human knowledge. Some of the most complex knowledge that people acquire, such as languages or cultural norms, can only be learned from other people, who themselves learned from previous generations. The prevalence of this process of âœiterated learning❠as a mode of cultural transmission raises the question of how it affects the information being transmitted. Analyses of iterated learning under the assumption that the learners are Bayesian agents predict that this process should converge to an equilibrium that reflects the inductive biases of the learners. An experiment in iterated function learning with human participants confirms this prediction, providing insight into the consequences of intergenerational knowledge transmission and a method for discovering the inductive biases that guide human inferences.

o   Herding Without Leaders

§  Iain Couzin

§  In peak years, locusts cover 20% of world landmass

§  Affect 10% of world population

§  They turn from green to brown when they come together

§  Specialized morphology= specialized behavior

§  Local rules:

§  1. If craving salt/protein, eat a locust

§  2. If being eaten, run away

§  creates swarm where they go faster and faster

o   Human Herding

§  Helbing Farkas and Vicsek 2007

§  People follow person in front of them in a fire

§  Everybody rushes to one exit because they are following the person in front of them

§  Banding

ú  Masses of people that move in one direction, while another group moves in the other direction

ú  Looks like people are coordinating with each other

ú  Example is humans moving in subway station

§  Coordination of Attention

ú  Nelson Rockefeller

ú  Famous person in area, all eyes go to him

ú  Even if farther away people can’t see him, their eyes still go towards him

ú  Milgram Bickman and Berkowitz 1969

·      Puts people on streets in different crowds, and has them look intently at nothing, as people walk by they start looking to, the more people you see doing it the more likely you are to

§  Emergent behavior: local rule: do what you see others doing

o   The power of neighbors

§  Chirstakis and fowler 2007

§  Increase in obesity is majorly determined by obese friend

o   Is fashion random?

§  “like totally”

§  ways of talking, linguistic patterns in young teenage girls can spread through the population at large

§  the new thing: vocal fry

§  salganik et al 2006

§  to what extent does the fashion matter vs people around you

§  took up and coming bands

§  put the bands best songs on a website for free download

§  there were 9 versions of the website

§  on one version there was no info about if other people liked it

§  in the other 8 worlds there was information about how other people ranked it

§  the best 5 songs will always be in top percent, worst 5 songs always in bottom percent. The middle is totally random and depends on what people have told you. Mechanisms of social influence can influence your choice.

§  Rwandan genocide

§  Holocaust

§  There was a necessary role of the leaders wanting violence, the small amount of people can have an outsize influence on the population

§  Couzin et al 2005

ú  Just how few leaders it takes to have an outsize effect on the population

ú  Cows in herd will go wherever herd goes, even though no single cow really knows where they are going

§  Special mechanisms that respond specifically because we are in a group context

§  LeBon (1895) The Crowd

ú  Humans behave differently in crowds

ú  Crowd uncovers base, unconscious desires

ú  Produces intellectual retardation

ú  Unveils destructiveness

ú  Exaggerates emotion

§  Jump!

ú  Mann 1981

ú  Chinese bride attempts suicide

ú  Suicide/violence more likely on summer nights

ú  Larger crowd has larger influence

ú  More likely on middle floors

ú  Much more likely at night

ú  Enhances sense of belonging

ú  Wiltermuth and heath 2009

ú  Brought Americans into lab and had them sing oh Canada

ú  Every time it says oh Canada you have to sing and bang your cup

ú  One group all doing it the same

ú  One group out of synch

ú  Another group doesn’t cup bang

ú  Another group doesn’t do any of the behaviors

ú  Then measured level of trust

ú  Synchronization leads to more trust

ú  Asynchronization leads to less trust

ú  Ginges Hansen and Norenzayan 2008

ú  Support of martyrdom predicted by religious attendence but not prayer

ú  The group oriented aspects of religion have the most effects

ú  Priming of synagogue versus prayer has way more effect

ú  In every single religion, people are more willing to die for god beliefs, based on coordinating behavior from religious worship

 Social Facilitation: does your behavior change if other people are around?

o   Social Facilitation

§  Zajon 1965 Blascovich et al 1999

§  Asked people if behavior changed if other people are around

§  If you are performing a task that is automatic, well-learned, when other people are around you tend to do better

§  When performing a task that is unlearned that you are nervous about, you tend to do worse when other people are around

an example of automatic conformity

§  Morrison et al unpublished senju et al 2007

§  People who are more empathetic and who do better on theory of mind tasks are more susceptible to contagious yawning

§  Autistic children are not susceptible to contagious yawning

Contagious body movements

an example of automatic conformity

§  Chartrand and bargh 1999

§  Experimenter would rub face during interaction or shake foot during interaction

§  People are more likely to rub face or shake foot if experimenter is

 The young werther effect

§  Cialdini and trost 1998

§  Suicide has a conformist dimension

§  Suicide rates go up after publicized suicides, especially those of celebrities (stack 1990)

§  Publicized suicides followed by 1000% increase in commercial airline crash deaths and also increase in passenger car deaths

§  Copycats tend to be similar age, gender, to models

§  The relationship holds even for fictional suicides

Everybody loves a chameleon

§  Chartrand and Bargh 1999

§  Participants rate liking the experimenter more and rating the interaction as more smooth if the experimenter is subtly imitating them

§  Mimicry puts you in a pro-social mood, enhances your sense of bonding with people around you (picking up the pen experiment)

§  Zak Schirmer and Mitchell 2011

§  Rate a face, see someone else rated higher, see face again, will rate slightly higher. Don’t change if peers rate the same.

§  The enhanced preference for people based on feedback, can see in brain, underlying preference is changing

§  Prestige and competence

§  Surprising lack of clear evidence that general prestige matters. But for example,

§  Some evidence that children prefer to copy older rather than younger peers

§  Lots of evidence that specific competence or knowledge matters. For example, copy david beckham for soccer skills

ú  MBAs pick the same stocks as previous winners

§  Evidence that prestige matters ore when people lack information, time, attention

§  Prestige over time

ú  Hoveland and weiss 1952

ú  People asked to rate the likelihood of imminent nuclear submarines, given information to guide behavior, can trust Robert Oppenheim or communist magazine, both say yes imminent. A high credibility source, people are more likely to trust it. but you ask them 4 weeks later, low credibility source will increase and high credibility source will decrease

ú  Lesson: untrustworthy source is a necessary cue to trigger reaction

§  Gump and kulik 1997

§  People introduced to stranger and told performing same or different tasks, rate pictures, solve puzzles etc

§  Low threat: blood pressure taken

§  High threat: heart attack simulated

§  If in a similar experiment and in high threat condition, they pay attention to the other person

§  Because you’re freaked out you will do anything the other person does

Female participants were exposed to high or low threat in the presence of another person believed to be facing either the same or a different situation. In Study 1, each dyad consisted of 2 actual participants, whereas in Study 2, each dyad consisted of 1 participant and 1 confederate, trained to convey either a calm or a nervous reaction to the situation. Affiliation patterns in both studies, defined in terms of the amount of time spent looking at the affiliate, were consistent with S. Schachter's (1959) "emotional similarity hypothesis"; threat increased affiliation and did so particularly with affiliates believed to be facing the same situation. The authors also found evidence of behavioral mimicry, in terms of facial expressions, and emotional contagion, in terms of self-reported anxiety. The behavioral mimicry and emotional contagion results are considered from both primitive emotional contagion and social comparison theory perspectives

 Gump and Kulik (1997) incorporated either strangers or confederates as participants' partners in stressful situations and found that affiliation facilitated emotional contagion.

§  Wiseman and koole 2003

§  Mortality salience and terror management

§  Describing the emotions you feel when you think about death, describe what you think will happen to you when you physically die

§  In the aftermath of 9/11 people came together, bush’s approval ratings went up

§  When we feel stress we reach out for each other and copy what we see going on around us

it is controlled conformity

§  Eg Irving Lorge

§  Hypnotism is an increased sense of social influence

§  Experimenter gives this quote: “those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed two distinct classes”

§  experimenter Lorge would say john adams said this or karl marx said this

§  depending on people’s personal beliefs, they would have radically different opinions of the statement

§  conclusion: people are blindly led into agreeing or disagreeing with the statement based on information on who spoke the words

§  See also deutsch and Gerard 1955

§  He pointed out that the statement is ambiguous, and that once you know who said it, you can imply more information, not because you are being blindly swayed, but you are coming to understand the intention behind the words

§  Informational vs normative

§  The Asch Study

ú  Asch 1951

ú  Thinks that if you make information obvious, people won’t conform

ú  Has different lengths of line, has other people say the wrong answer

ú  Asch’s conclusion is you need the information and normative dimensions to capture conformist behavior

ú  Normative: trying to fit in, didn’t actually think length of line was different

Informational vs normative compliance

Informational social influence occurs when one turns to the members of one's group to obtain and accept accurate information about reality.

Normative social influence occurs when one conforms to be liked or accepted by the members of the group.

ú  Baron et al 1996

ú  Importance: used for witness id, plus $20

ú  Difficulty: 10s vs 1s exposure

ú  When a task is difficult and important, then there is the highest level of conformity

ú  When a task is low importance, care less about conformity

controlled conformity

ú  Cohen 2003

ú  Generous policy: great welfare program

ú  Stringent policy: not great welfare program

ú  People are given these policies to evaluate

ú  If not given information, republicans prefer stringent over generous

ú  But prefer generous over stringent if given information that their party supports it

from Robert Cialdini

o   Conformity (social validation)

o   Authority

o   Consistency

o   Reciprocity

o   Friendship/liking

o   Scarcity 

o   Allcott 2009

o   Show people on energy bill, who well they are doing compared to neighbors

o   Can get a frowny face on utility bill

o   The worst offenders have the biggest effect, 6-7% in energy usage behavior

o   Milgram 1965

o   People continued because of the authority figures

o   People are more compliant when a few feet away versus over telephone

o   Freedman and fraser 1966

o   1. Ask for team to review household products (6 men, 2 hours)

o   2. Ask after making initial phone contact

o   3. Ask afer familiarizing with questions about product use by phone

o   4. Ask after administering phone survey on product use

o   if people first complete the survey, there is a 30% rise in their willingness to have the team come

o   people want to be behaviorally consistent, after making a small contribution to cause, they think I’m the type of person who helps out on the phone, I’m the type of person who helps out for more exhaustive search as well

o   foot in the door with small request, then can get to comply with larger request

o   sign experiment

§  have signs for make CA beautiful or drive slowly

§  say want to put up sign on lawn, most say no

§  give them a small sign of CA beautiful to put up, they are willing, come back with giant sign, double the rate of people are willing to put large sign for drive slowly in yard

§  give them drive slowly first, then 75% more wiling to do big drive slowly sign shows consistency with type of person who cares about community

·      Humans aren’t adapted to a single particular environment

·      King William Island

o   Boyd, richerson and henrich 2011

o   Winter temperatures are -10 to -30

o   But people live here and can survive here

o   The Inuit have very specific knowledge about how to survive

·      The lost European explorer experiment

o   Boyd richerson and henrich 2011

o   Sir john franklin, search for northewest passage in 1845

o   Nobody was able to survive

o   They had lead poisoning, but no cultural specific knowledge that allow them to survive in that environment

Conformity is Good

·      Boyd richerson and henrich 2011

·      Imitation, mimicry, conformity pays because winners survive

·      This requires genes for imitation

Conformity: Majority vs Sampling

·      Glimcher 2004

·      Ducks go to where most bread crumbs are, ruin their chances for more if they all go there

·      1. Biased transmission

o   boyd and richerson 2004

o   over the time the population can progress to be dominated by a certain type

o   individuals can bias the transmission from one generation to the next through individual evaluation. Not through genes

·      2. Guided variation

o   boyd and richerson 2004

o   a way to improve upon what you see

o   principle: variation is not random

Cultural traits may be gained in a population through the process of individual learning. Once an individual learns a novel trait, it can be transmitted to other members of the population. The process of guided variation depends on an adaptive standard that determines what cultural variants are learned.

·      Side effects of biased transmission

o   There’s a bias in the brain and let you overlook things

Transmission biases occur when some cultural variants are favored over others during the process of cultural transmission.^[28] Boyd and Richerson (1985)^[28] defined and analytically modeled a number of possible transmission biases. The list of biases has been refined over the years, especially by Henrich and McElreath.^[29]

[edit]Content bias

Content biases result from situations where some aspect of a cultural variant's content makes them more likely to be adopted.^[30] Content biases can result from genetic preferences, preferences determined by existing cultural traits, or a combination of the two. For example, food preferences can result from genetic preferences for sugary or fatty foods and socially-learned eating practices and taboos.^[30]Content biases are sometimes called "direct biases."^[28]

[edit]Context bias

Context biases result from individuals using clues about the social structure of their population to determine what cultural variants to adopt. This determination is made without reference to the content of the variant. There are two major categories of context biases: (1) model-based biases, and (2) frequency-dependent biases.

[edit]Model-based biases

Model-based biases result when an individual is biased to choose a particular "cultural model" to imitate. There are four major categories of model-based biases: (1) prestige bias, (2) skill bias, (3) success bias, (4) similarity bias.^[2][31] A "prestige bias" results when individuals are more likely to imitate cultural models that are seen as having more prestige. A measure of prestige could be the amount of deference shown to a potential cultural model by other individuals. A "skill bias" results when individuals can directly observe different cultural models performing a learned skill and are more likely to imitate cultural models that perform better at the specific skill. A "success bias" results from individuals preferentially imitating cultural models that they determine are most generally successful (as opposed to successful at a specific skill as in the skill bias.) A "similarity bias" results when individuals are more likely to imitate cultural models that are perceived as being similar to the individual based on specific traits.

[edit]Frequency-dependent biases

Frequency-dependent biases result when an individual is biased to choose particular cultural variants based on their perceived frequency in the population. The most explored frequency-dependent bias is the "conformity bias." Conformity biases result when individuals attempt to copy the mean or the mode cultural variant in the population. Another possible frequency dependent bias is the "rarity bias." The rarity bias results when individuals preferentially choose cultural variants that are less common in the population. The rarity bias is also sometimes called a "nonconformist bias".

Mental Parasites

o   Richard dawkins, pascal boyer

o   Chain mail

o   The letters perpetuate themselves

o   Urban legend that alligator came out of toilet

o   our mind is designed to find other minds

o   the human visual system is designed to find faces wherever it can

o   we are biased to find faces in images and to find other minds

 Robin dunbar “social brain hypothesis”

Dunbar's number is a suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. These are relationships in which an individual knows who each person is, and how each person relates to every other person

o   Neocortex ratio

o   Group size

o   Our large brain adapation is an adaptation not to the environment but to people

this limit is a direct function of relativeneocortex size, and that this in turn limits group size ... the limit imposed by neocortical processing capacity is simply on the number of individuals with whom a stable inter-personal relationship can be maintained.

 Game Theory

Game theory is a method of studying strategic decision making. More formally, it is "the study ofmathematical models of conflict and cooperation between intelligent rational decision-makers."

o   Equations that base behavior off how other people behaved in those same situations

o   Game theory analysis of nuclear war: convince the enemy that you will retaliate by wiping them off the face of the earth, that’s how you get safety

The game of Chicken

o 

The game of chicken, also known as the hawk-dove game, is an influential model of conflict for two players in game theory. The principle of the game is that while each player prefers not to yield to the other, the worst possible outcome occurs when both players do not yield.

If you don’t swerve car you win

o   Both stay, both die

o   Both swerve, both chickens

o   You swerve they don’t, you’re a chicken

o   You can’t know the optimal strategy until you know what the other person is likely to do

o   Lesson: optimal genes can depend on social environment

 Chicken is an anti-coordination game, in which it is mutually beneficial for the players to play different strategies

o   Cooperate or defect

o   No matter what the player does, you do better by defecting

o   Mutual cooperation leads to better outcomes than mutual defection

o   Group benefit (cooperate) vs individual benefit (defect)

o   Solution 1: Group Selection

§  Cooperation does better than defection

§  If one defector comes into group, ruins everything

§  Requires low migration rates and strong selection pressure

§  Muir 1996

§  Within group selection vs between group selection

§  Get more eggs out of between group selection because can prevent defector from getting in

o   Solution 2: Punishment

§  Boyd and richerson 1992

§  Killed if defect

§  2^nd order punishment dilemma: whose actually gonna kill the defector

o   Solution 3: Reciprocity

§  Trivers 1971

§  We will be collectively stronger by cooperating and none of us will cooperate with the defector

§  Tit for tat and always defect, both weak

§  Tit for tat and tit for tat are both strong

§  Two defectors will always be weak

moral norms can sustain themselves if you can recognize who your biological kin is and you choose to cooperate with them

kin recognition and favoritism

close groups based around family units

rule" we must share values

in-group loyalty based on ideology

unquestioning respect for moral authority

what feels wrong to me is wrong for you

However this leads to:

·      resistance to change, reverence for tradition

·      intolerance of alternative values

·      cooperation with people who are similar

·      monogamy: the pacifying influence of women

The gene-centered view of evolution postulates that natural selection will increase the frequency of those genes whose phenotypic effects ensure their successful replication. A gene for altruism can be favored by selection if the altruism is primarily directed at other individuals who share the same gene (kin selection).

A green-beard effect occurs when a gene, or linked genes, produce three phenotypic effects:

1. a perceptible trait — the hypothetical "green beard";
2. recognition of this trait in others; and
3. preferential treatment to those recognized.

So this gene is directly recognizing copies of itself, regardless of average relatedness. Whereas most alleles that are favored by kin selection spread by promoting altruism towards those likely to be carrying the same allele, green-beard alleles would rise to frequency by promoting altruism toward individuals certain to be carrying the same allele.

Green-beard altruism could increase the presence of green-beard phenotypes in a population even if genes are assisting other genes that are not exact copies of themselves in a molecular sense; all that is required is that they produce the three phenotypic characteristics described above. Green beard genes are vulnerable to mutant genes arising that produce the perceptible trait without the helping behaviour.

·      Bertrand and Mullainathan 2003

·      over 1000 applications to every advertised job in Boston and Chicago

·      real applications for real jobs

·      made names that are most common for african americans vs white americans

·      white name examples: emily anne jill allison brett brendan greg

·      black names: aisha, keisha, rasheed, kareem

·      wanted to know the impact on who will get hired

·      measured by who got called back for an interview

·      proportion was dramatically higher for whiter names

·      quality of application makes a significant difference for white names while not for black names

·      schulman et al 1999

·      720 physicians

·      hired actors to describe a set of symptoms

·      measured if referred for cardiac catheterization

·      major drop off for the rate that black females are advised to get this life-saving treatment

·      uhlmann pizarro tannenbaum and ditto 2009

·      given example of sacrificing one for benefit of the group

·      one example has the one thrown under the bus named Tyrone Payton for Harlem Jazz group

·      the other example is Chip Ellsworth III for philharmonic

·      measuring the extent to which you value the one life you are throwing away

·      eberhardt et al 2006

·      44 black men who killed whites

·      118 black men who killed blacks

·      mostly white Philadelphia juries

·      had students rate photos for stereotypically black

·      does having a more stereotypically black face increase your chances of the death penalty?

·      Yes, if black killed whites, no if black killed blacks

·      devine 1989

·      knowledge of the black stereotype is the same for high prejudiced and low prejudiced white subjects

·      all subjects, whether reporting high or low prejudice are more likely to identify an ambiguous behavior as hostile if they have been primed with words related to black stereotypes

·      but low prejudiced subjects report no negative attitudes toward blacks at all

·      thus low prejudiced subjects must inhibit stereotyping when they report their impressions of black people

·      automatic stereotyping is more hard to suppress 

Implicit Association Task (testing for implicit racist attitudes)

·      Greenwald McGhee and Schwartz 1998

·      people have a harder time with black and positive association

·      a website that can test all sorts of implicit attitudes

·      lane et al 2007

·      about 2/3 of whites show pro-white, anti-black bias

·      about 1/2 of blacks do the same

·      reasonably good test/re-test reliability

·      small to moderate correlation with explicit attitudes

·      small to moderate correlation with behavior (contested)

·      the category matters (character vs nationality)

·      affected by exposure to positive exemplars

·      Cunnigham et al 2004

·      shown black and white faces for 30ms or 525 ms

·      the weaker stimulus provokes the stronger discrimination

·      measure this by looking at amygdala

·      if you see it longer, you can use explicit processes to suppress discrimination, because they can consciously interpret it

·      IAT score correlates with level of amygdala activity for subliminally presented black faces

·      increased discrepancy between automatic and controlled attitudes predicts activity in a network of brain regions related to cognitive control (think "willpower")

Implicit & Explicit Attitudes in Children

·      dunham baron and banaji 2008

·      a 6-10 will say they will rather be friends with a friend of the same race

·      but as you get older it is not longer sensitive to race (explicit attitudes)

·      but implicit attitudes remain the same from childhood to adulthood

·      vicious cycle:

o   cognitive dissonance, guided towards patterns of behavior that reflect the iniquities you see and participate in

o   confirmation bias

·      hierarchical inference:

o   make assumptions based on what has been

·      essentialism

o   biological folk theory of race

o   fundamental attribution error

·      coalitional psychology:

-the tendency for humans to sort people into groups (see next card for experiments for this)

o   minimal group paradigm: method for investigating the minimal conditions required for discrimination to occur between groups. Experiments using this approach have revealed that even arbitrary and virtually meaningless distinctions between groups (e.g. the colour of their shirts)[2] can trigger a tendency to favour one's own group at the expense of others

o   henri tajfel 1970

o   asked difference between two paintings

o   kids are willing to give their own group members less of a payoff to ensure that their group members will do better than the others

Intergroup relations

Having moved to Bristol University, Tajfel began his work on intergroup relations and particularly his minimal groups experiments. In these studies (1970-1),^[8][9] test subjects were divided arbitrarily into two groups, based on a trivial and almost completely irrelevant basis. Participants did not know other members of the group, did not even know who they were, and had no reason to expect that they would interact with them in the future. Still, members of both groups began to identify themselves with their group, preferring other members of their group and favoring them with rewards that maximized their own group's outcomes. Even 'on the basis of a coin toss...simple categorization into groups seems to be sufficient reason for people to dispense valued rewards in ways that favor in-group members over those who are "different"'.^[10][11]

[edit]Social identity theory

Subsequently, Tajfel and his student John Turner developed the theory of social identity.^[12] They proposed that people have an inbuilt tendency to categorize themselves into one or more "ingroups", building a part of their identity on the basis of membership of that group and enforcing boundaries with other groups.

Social identity theory suggests that people identify with groups in such a way as to maximize positive distinctiveness; groups offer bothidentity (they tell us who we are) and self-esteem (they make us feel good about ourselves). The theory of social identity has had a very substantial impact on many areas of social psychology, including group dynamics, intergroup relations, prejudice and stereotyping, andorganizational psychology.

o   Race vs Coalition in Adults

o   kurzban, tooby and cosmoses 2001

o   as soon as you put a physical marker of a team, a jersey, team starts to beat race as the marker

o   humans are built to find groups, if there aren't jerseys they look to race

o   Race vs Language

o   kinzler, shuts, dejesus and spelke 2009

o   assessed 5 year old kids, kids more likely to play with others that have their native accent, language

o   but if someone of a different race but same accent, or different accent but same race, having the same accent dominates over race

o   means that race is dependent on coalitional psychology

o   Robbers Cave

o   Sherif 1961

o   two groups of kids put in teams, they become very violent towards each other    

o   then make two groups work towards the same goal, repairing water crisis, the kids started working together, the kids end up eating together and liking each other

when tried to divide them up again at the end of camp kids revolted and refused to be divided

·      Facial Imitation Experiment

o   Meltzoff & Moore 1997

o   Child returns facial expression that they see

o   “proto-conversations” simulation theory

·      Imitation vs Emulation (three experiments)

o   Nagell Olguin and Tomasello 1993

o   Comparing between children and chimpanzees

o   See experimenter using tool to get reward, more efficient to use rake upside down

o   If you use tool in inefficient way, child will use tool in inefficient way, over-imitation

o   Lyons Young and Keil 2007

o   Constructed different types of boxes, tell kids have to find sticker, experimenter would show how to get sticker but make it more complicated to get it

o   The child overimitated

o   Could be just to please experimenter

o   Check that it is all set for next participant, be sure not to do things that are silly

o   Still the kid performs unnecessary actions

o   Horner and Whiten 2005

o   Chimpanzee can tell if action is unnecessary or not in clear box

o   In opaque box, chimpanzee will perform irrelevant action because they don’t know its unnecessary 

·     

Joint attention: parent and child jointly paying attention to single entity

·      Johnson et al 2008

·      Beeping blob, no eyes, no face

·      Talks with adult

·      Rotates, flanked by toys

·      Joint interaction is learned through interaction with parents

·      We have a basic mechanism that tries to find attention in any entity we interact with and to try and track its gaze

Joint attention is the shared focus of two individuals on an object. It is achieved when one individual alerts another to an object by means of eye-gazing, pointing or other verbal or non-verbal indications. An individual gazes at another individual, points to an object and then returns their gaze to the individual. Scaife and Bruner were the first researchers to present across-sectional description of children's ability to follow eye gaze in 1975. They found that most eight- to ten-month-old children followed a line of regard, and that all 11- to 14-month-old children did so. This early research showed it was possible for an adult to bring certain objects in the environment to an infant's attention using eye gaze

·      Imitation of Uncompleted Actions: what this shows about imitation

o   Meltzoff 1995

o   Childs can infer ultimate goal of meltzoff’s action

o   Suggests that we are not totally and completely blind imitators

o   Kids are interpreting adult’s behavior in terms of rational action, if they can figure out the reason they can leave blind imitation behind. If they cant figure out the reason, they will blind imitate

who pays the costs of punishment and reward for group benefit?

ex: someone being annoying and humming, everyone is annoyed, who is going to take the social risk and say shut up, so no one does it. 

The tragedy of the commons is a dilemma arising from the situation in which multiple individuals, acting independently and rationally consulting their own self-interest, will ultimately deplete a shared limited resource, even when it is clear that it is not in anyone's long-term interest for this to happen.

what can happen in groups when individuals act in their own best self interests and ignore what’s best for the whole group

o   Genetic epistemology: The origins of knowledge

o   Stage theory

§  Early: sensorimotor

§  Later: abstraction

The goal of genetic epistemology is to link the validity of knowledge to the model of its construction. In other words, it shows that the method in which the knowledge was obtained/created affects the validity of that knowledge. For example, our direct experience with gravity makes our knowledge of it more valid than our indirect experience with black holes. Genetic epistemology also explains the process of how a human being develops cognitively from birth throughout his or her life through four primary stages of development: sensorimotor (birth to age 2), preoperational (2-7), concrete operational (7-11), and formal operational (11 years onward). The main focus is on the younger years of development.

§  Marbles, young children play without knowledge of rules or other players. As kids become a little older, they become hyper-obsessed with marbles, then kids learn not all about rules. Progression from surface level understand to more abstract understanding of the game

§  A curse is a lie.

§  Outcome vs intent. Break 1 cup with bad intent vs break 15 by accident. Young kids thing breaking 15 is worse.

·      Warneken and tomasello 2006

·      Experimenter drops something and kid picks it up for him, can’t open closet kid opens it for him

·      Also present in chimps (esp enculturated)

·      Not increased by reward (chimp or human)

·      Hamlin Wynn and Bloom 2007

·      Kid sees shapes helping each other and pushing down

·      At 10 months, picks the nice shape, the helper

·      At 6 months, chooses the hinderer

·      Hamlin Wynn Bloom and Mahajan 2011

·      First kids see yellow elephant help duck, red elephant doesn’t help

·      Then see red elephant not help duck

·      Then see moose is nice to the good one, and bad to the mean elephant

·      5 month old infants prefer giving moose and not taking moose

·      they aren’t integrating information, just thinking you do nice things I want you

·      but at 8 months, only prefer nice that are nice to other nice. And prefer mean to other bad mean.

·      So you have abstract moral knowledge at 8 months old

·      Sloane Raillargeon and Premack 2012

·      Experimenter gives more toys to one giraffes than other

·      Surprise at this vs both getting equal

·      Children have longer looking times/greater surprise to unequal event

·      By 22 months, children expect resources to be distributed equally when it is possible to do so

·      Dictator Game

o   Blake & McAuliffe 2011

o   Red lever, no one gets anything, green lever- they get one other gets four m and ms

o   At every age, kids are more likely to pull the red lever. If it looks fair than they won’t reject it, if it looks unfair, they will reject it.

o   If unfair for other person, they won’t reject it until they are 8 years old.

·      Hamann Warneken Greenberg Tomasello

·      Kids care about fairness in some extent to all conditions, but chimps don’t care that much about fairness at all, when they do care about it even minimally there is no distinction between joint work and individual work

·      Humans have joint intentionality and can share goals and actions

·      Mahajan & Wynn in prep

·      Kids can eat graham crackers and green beans

·      Then see puppet liking graham crackers and not beans

·      And the other puppet liking beans and not graham crackers

·      Kid likes the puppet that likes graham crackers

·      Like those that share your values

·      The Vicious Cycle

o   Olson dweck spelke and banaji 2011

o   Inequity in cookie distribution

o   Young children tend to assume that the inequity is rational, so they invest in perpetuating it. because if its what you observe, it must be the right thing.

o   7-12 years old, they switch and try to rectify the distribution

o   difference in black and white, but not white and asian

·      Dominance

o   Thomsen frankenhuis ingold-smith and carey 2011

o   By 9 months old and older ages, they are surprised by large shape bow down to small shape

·      Human babies are designed for social fitness

o   They seek allies and avoid enemies

o   They like to see good rewarded and evil punished

o   They can be altruistic

§  But they can also be selfish

They pay attention to groups and to dominance

Morality & The Extended Phenotype

·      Using punishment to try to change the behavior of the other baboon, its genotype is changing that other baboon’s behavior

·      Extended phenotype of creating cooperation

The Extended Phenotype is a biological concept introduced by Richard Dawkins in a 1982 book with the same title. The main idea is that phenotype should not be limited to biological processes such as protein biosynthesis or tissue growth, but extended to include all effects that a gene has on its environment, inside or outside of the body of the individual organism.

The Adaptive Logic of Punishment

·      Agent is harming the patient

·      When the patient gets harmed, its going to punish the agent

·      In terms of natural selection, the patient is trying to change the agent’s behavior

·      Ultimately: you punish people to change their behavior

Punishment (what it does, an example of it) 

·      Fehr & Gatcher 2002

·      6 people playing game, everyone benefits most if everyone pools the money. But individuals do better by not putting their money in the pool.

·      Played 6 rounds of it

·      With possibility of punishment, rate of contribution is high

·      Without possibility, rate of contribution goes down

·      Punishment can be a useful way to modify people’s behavior and get them to be more cooperative

Ultimatum Game

·      Werner, Schmidttberger & Schwarze 1982

·      Player 1 recieves $10, offers some amount to player 2

·      Player 2 can accept (both keep money) or instead player 2 can reject (both lose all money)

·      Anonymous, 1 shot interaction

·      Rational response: accept 1$

·      You’re never going to meet them again, so no point in punishing them for giving you a bad offer, you might as well accept 1$ and get the free dollar

·      But observed response: people reject less than $3

·      And most people make an offer of about 5$

·      Conclusion: we’re not punishing or rejecting this offer because we are thinking strategically about wanting to modify someone’s behavior in the future, we punish people because they slighted us or ripped us off, we’re not strategizing we just want revenge

·      This works when the stakes are raised to $100

·      Even works in non western cultures where 100$ means a lot to them, they still reject

Tinbergen’s Levels of Analysis (as related to punishment)

·      We have a revenge reflex

·      We’re accomplishing the goals in the adaptive analysis

Punishment: Retribution vs Deterrence

·      Carlsmith Darley and Robinson 2002

·      Most people say they punish for both retributive (they deserve it) and deterrent (intended to discourage someone from doing something) reasons

·      Deterrence

o   Likelihood of detection

o   Likelihood of publicity

·      Retribution

o   Severity of offense

o   Lack of excuse

·      There is a large effect for retribution and virtually no effect for deterrence (despite strongly stated preferences for deterrence theory, individual sentencing decisions seemed driven exclusively by retributive concerns)

Criteria for Retributive Punishment

·      Alicke Weiner Malle Cushman Shultz many others

·      Causation: punish people who cause harm

·      Intent: increase punishment for intentional harms, decrease punishment for accidental harms

·      Controllability: controllable behavior can be punished even when accidental

Causality refers to whether the action was personally caused or caused by some other force, such as fate. Controllability refers to the degree of control an actor has overthe situation

Moral Luck (two examples)

·      Cushman et al 2009

·      Drunk driving and hitting tree vs drunk driving and killing girl

·      The intent is completely identical, but punishment is completely different (fine vs years in prison)

·      In the lab: player 1: choose to roll one of three dice

o   Die a: high probability $10 to p1, $0 to p2

o   Dia b: high probability %5 split

o   Die C: high probability $0 to p1, $10 to p2

·      Intentions: stingy, fair, generous

·      Outcome: stingy, fair generous

·      Player 2: can reward/punish player 1$ up to 9$

·      Will player 2 punish based on intention or outcome?

·      Turns out player 1 is held responsible for outcome, how our attributive impulses work

Blame Blocking

·      Cushman 2008

·      Intent: kill rival, but failed attempt (allergic to hazelnuts not poppy seeds) this is the harm case

o   People disagree about to what extent to punish

·      Second case: sprinkles poppy seeds, salad just happens to have hazelnuts, so rival dies but not at the fault of rival. This is the coincidental harm case

o   Because your attributive impulses start with harmful event and then look to who’s responsible, it can turn you away from who’s actually responsible

o   Here people are less likely to blame the rival

Self-Regulation and the Aversion to Harm: Killology

·      Killology

o   Grossman 1995

o   Gettysburg: 27, 500 muskets recovered

o   About 80% of them are filled and a very small fraction are empty

o   Some of them are filled with more than 3 cartridges

o   These 27,000 people are getting front lines, loading weapons, pretending to shoot, keep loading and pretending until someone finally shoots them

o   Combat kill rates dramatically lower than training, esp on front lines, not artillery air force etc

o   Anecdotal reports: major emotional costs of killing

o   Ptsd: highest for GIs lower for other servicemen, civilian populations

Trolley Problem

·      Imagine out of control trolley speeding towards five people, if you push fat guy in front of train you will be able to save five people

·      Moral choices not guided by abstract calculation about saving lives

Morally vs Conventionally Wrong

·      Turiel, Nucci & others

·      Things that are moral engage our emotions more intensely

·      Thinks that are conventionally wrong don’t engage our emotions as much

·      Blair 1995

·      Psychopaths do not show standard moral/conventional distinction, because they treat everything as moral

·      Because they lack the emotions they don’t see what the difference between morals and conventions

·      They say moral conventions are wrong just because not because of human welfare

Dual Process Morality

·      Can flip a switch that will make trolley go down track to kill one instead of 5

·      90% of people will flip switch

·      but 10%  of people will push fat man

·      the difference is inside the head of the person making the choice

·      its impersonal vs personal

Automatic emotional system's impact on moral decisions vs controlled

Controlled

·      Greene et al 2004

·      More activiation in Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex for utilitarian choices

Dual Process Morality in terms of philosophy

·      Greene 2007

·      Utilitarianism: john stuart mill

·      Deontology: Immanuel kant

·      Psychological conflict between dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and ventromedial prefrontal cortex

·      Philosophical conflict between mill and kant

Moral Dumbfounding

·      Haidt & Hersh 1999

·      Cushman Young and Hauser 2006

·      People can’t explain why anal sex, sex with dog is wrong, why siblings shouldn’t have sex

·      Emotional judgements are formed by rapid emotional reactiosn, sometimes you make up reasoning to explain your rapid emotional reaction

·      (the emotional dog and the rational tail)

·      Hait 2001

Philosophical Confabulation

·      Schwitzgebel and cushman 2012

·      Can you actually show confabulation in philosophers?

·      Some people judge push case then swith case, this order means your more likely to judge them as equally moral

·      If you judge switch then push, you are more likely to judge them differently

·      Ordinary people and academics don’t do it, but philosophers especially ethics focusers, or more likely to accept the doctrine of double effect

·      No philosopher would say the order is a reason to accept the principle, this shift is due to confabulation

Morality Shapes Everything

·      Causation

o   Knobe and Fraser 2008

o   Morality changes how we view causation

o   Think professor is responsible for stealing pens not secretary even though equally guilty

·      Intention

o   Knobe 2003

o   Morality changes how we view intention

Happiness

Phillips et al 2011

people refuse to say that someone who doesn't work and just parties is happy

people think the hardworking one is happy, morality influences perception of happiness

Events

Cushman et al 2008

women pregnant, told needs to maintain diet to keep baby, doesn't keep diet cause doesn't want baby

actively ended pregnancy vs passively allowed it to happen

pro-life people say she actively, while pro-choice say passively

the way that we describe events being active or passive is determined by our moral judgements

Haidt Kohler and Dias 1993

given five scenarios, asked if morally wrong

higher SES people generally apply harm principle: if no one is harmed then they are less likely to say morally wrong

lower SES people extend morality beyond harm principle

Conservative and Liberal Moralities

Graham Haidt and Nosek 2009

categories are harm, fairness, in-group (loyalty), authority, purity

everybody is more or less agreeing that harm and fairness are important

liberals reject in-group, authority and purity as morally relevant

Pitfalls of Punishment

·      Dreber Rand Fudenberg and Nowak 2008

·      logic punishment game: you have more money at the end of the game if you don't punish

·      there are cycles of retributive violence

·      punishment when it spirals out of control can be a disadvantageous process, you should depend on reciprocal cooperation instead

·      punishment: vicious cycle

·      reward: virtuous cycle

·      problem: rewarding people for leaving you alone doesn't look so virtuous (if someone tries to steal your tv and you say no take my radio instead)

·      retributive punishment is dangerous, but being a sucker is worse

Religion and Charity

·      Putnam and Campbell 2010

·      religious people are more charitable than non religious people

·      they cooperate more with each other

·      religion binds a unit together, makes them cooperate, makes it healthier, gets the group to grow, maximizes social benefit

Religion and Intolerance

·      Stouffer 1955 Putnam and Campbell 2010

·      who should be allowed to speak, write and teach?

·      communists atheists militants homosexuals racists

·      intolerance tends to correlate with religiosity

·      more religious you are more likely you are to see these people as not fit to write/speak/teach

·      intolerance differs by denomination, especially strong for evangelical

·      mediated by commitment to religion as institutional authority

·      if don't go to church a lot and participate in social religious community, then you have lower levels of intolerance

Ideology Beyond Religion

Fascism: Fascism tends to include a belief in the supremacy of one national or ethnic group, a contempt for democracy, an insistence on obedience to a powerful leader, and a strong demagogic approach.

functions as a group mentality as well

·      potentially states can solve the problem in a different way than group solution (green beards)

·      states can lay down the law and change behavior

·      states monopolize punishment, can impose punishment and rewards

·      its an ultimate and insurmountable dominant authority that can do the punishing

·      States Reduce Violence

·      Pinker 2011

·      crime wave that peaked in 50s 60s and tapered off in 90s

·      way more homicide in pre-literate societies (because of retributive cycles of violence)

·      we don't have to share values if state is telling us what to do

·      but you still need norms

States Depend on Norms

·      states allow large peaceful societies to emerge

·      but they can't do it alone

·      you need people to have same ideas about interactions, so there will be cooperation

Cross-Cultural Fairness

·      Henrich et al 2005

·      how much variation with how people in different societies interact with strangers

·      in ultimatum game, 50% is common amount

·      no society does the just 1 dollar

·      and very few cultures go above 50%

·      the more capitalistic you are, the more division of labor there is, the more you have to interact economically with other people, the more likely you are to do the fairness norm

·      Gachter and Hermann 2008

·      in boston and zurich they tend to put a lot of money in the middle, people who are free-riders (taking money but not paying the costs) get punished

·      but in athens, muscat, samara- nobody puts anything in and then one punishes the other

·      in those situations punishment doesn't change how much you contribute

Our results show that punishment opportunities are socially beneficial only if complemented by strong social norms of cooperation.