Behavioral and Brain Sciences

Table of Contents - February 2012 - Volume 35, Issue 01  

Open Peer Commentary

Reciprocity and uncertainty

Yoella Bereby-Meyera1

a1 Department of Psychology, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva 84105, Israel. Yoella@bgu.ac.il www.YoellaBerebyMeyer.com

Abstract

Guala points to a discrepancy between strong negative reciprocity observed in the lab and the way cooperation is sustained “in the wild.” This commentary suggests that in lab experiments, strong negative reciprocity is limited when uncertainty exists regarding the players' actions and the intentions. Thus, costly punishment is indeed a limited mechanism for sustaining cooperation in an uncertain environment.

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    Reciprocity: Weak or strong? What punishment experiments do (and do not) demonstrate Francesco Guala Department of Economics, University of Milan, 20122 Milan, Italy. francesco.guala@unimi.it http://users.unimi.it/guala/index.htm