Behavioral and Brain Sciences

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

Open Peer Commentary

Is strong reciprocity really strong in the lab, let alone in the real world?

Şule Güneya1 and Ben R. Newella1

a1 School of Psychology, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, 2052, Australia. s.guney@unsw.edu.au http://www.psy.unsw.edu.au/profiles/phd/sguney.html ben.newell@unsw.edu.au http://www2.psy.unsw.edu.au/Users/BNewell/

Abstract

We argue that standard experiments supporting the existence of “strong reciprocity” do not represent many cooperative situations outside the laboratory. More representative experiments that incorporate “earned” rather than “windfall” wealth also do not provide evidence for the impact of strong reciprocity on cooperation in contemporary real-life situations or in evolutionary history, supporting the main conclusions of the target article.

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