Behavioral and Brain Sciences

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

Open Peer Commentary

Social preference experiments in animals: Strengthening the case for human preferences

Keith Jensena1

a1 Research Centre for Psychology, School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, Queen Mary, University of London, London E1 4NS, United Kingdom. k.jensen@qmul.ac.uk http://www.sbcs.qmul.ac.uk/staff/keithjensen.html

Abstract

Guala appears to take social preferences for granted in his discussion of reciprocity experiments. While he does not overtly claim that social preferences are only by-products that arise in testing environments, he does assert that whatever they are – and how they evolved – they have little value in the real world. Experiments on animals suggest that social preferences may be unique to humans, supporting the idea that they might play a prominent role in our world.

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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