IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wpa/wuwpga/0412003.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Negative Reciprocity: The Coevolution of Memes and Genes

Author

Listed:
  • Daniel Friedman

    (University of California, Santa Cruz)

  • Nirvikar Singh

    (University of California, Santa Cruz)

Abstract

A preference for negative reciprocity is an important part of the human emotional repertoire. We model its role in sustaining cooperative behavior but highlight an intrinsic free-rider problem: the fitness benefits of negative reciprocity are dispersed throughout the entire group, but the fitness costs are borne personally. Evolutionary forces tend to unravel people’s willingness to bear the personal cost of punishing culprits. In our model, the countervailing force that sustains negative reciprocity is a meme consisting of a group norm together with low-powered (and low-cost) group enforcement of the norm. The main result is that such memes coevolve with personal tastes and capacities so as to produce the optimal level of negative reciprocity.

Suggested Citation

  • Daniel Friedman & Nirvikar Singh, 2004. "Negative Reciprocity: The Coevolution of Memes and Genes," Game Theory and Information 0412003, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:wpa:wuwpga:0412003
    Note: Type of Document - pdf; pages: 26
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://econwpa.ub.uni-muenchen.de/econ-wp/game/papers/0412/0412003.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ernst Fehr & Simon Gächter, 2000. "Fairness and Retaliation: The Economics of Reciprocity," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 14(3), pages 159-181, Summer.
    2. Sethi, Rajiv & Somanathan, E., 2003. "Understanding reciprocity," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 50(1), pages 1-27, January.
    3. Harrington, Joseph E, Jr, 1989. "If Homo Economicus Could Choose His Own Utility Function, Would He Want One with a Conscience?: Comment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(3), pages 588-593, June.
    4. David K. Levine, 1998. "Modeling Altruism and Spitefulness in Experiment," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 1(3), pages 593-622, July.
    5. Friedman, Daniel & Singh, Nirvikar, 2009. "Equilibrium vengeance," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 66(2), pages 813-829, July.
    6. George A. Akerlof & Rachel E. Kranton, 2000. "Economics and Identity," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 115(3), pages 715-753.
    7. Jorgen W. Weibull, 1997. "Evolutionary Game Theory," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262731215, December.
    8. Herbert Gintis, 2000. "Strong Reciprocity and Human Sociality," UMASS Amherst Economics Working Papers 2000-02, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Department of Economics.
    9. Frank, Robert H, 1987. "If Homo Economicus Could Choose His Own Utility Function, Would He Want One with a Conscience?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 77(4), pages 593-604, September.
    10. Samuel Bowles & Herbert Gintis, 1998. "The Evolution of Strong Reciprocity," Research in Economics 98-08-073e, Santa Fe Institute.
    11. Drew Fudenberg & Jean Tirole, 1991. "Game Theory," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262061414, December.
    12. Robert W. Rosenthal, 2001. "Trust and social efficiencies," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 6(3), pages 413-428.
    13. Martin A. Nowak & Karl Sigmund, 1998. "Evolution of indirect reciprocity by image scoring," Nature, Nature, vol. 393(6685), pages 573-577, June.
    14. Friedman, Daniel, 1991. "Evolutionary Games in Economics," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 59(3), pages 637-666, May.
    15. Joel M. Guttman, 2003. "Repeated interaction and the evolution of preferences for reciprocity," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 113(489), pages 631-656, July.
    16. M.A. Nowak & K. Sigmund, 1998. "Evolution of Indirect Reciprocity by Image Scoring/ The Dynamics of Indirect Reciprocity," Working Papers ir98040, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Friedman, Daniel & Singh, Nirvikar, 2009. "Equilibrium vengeance," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 66(2), pages 813-829, July.
    2. Lauren Cohen & Andrea Frazzini & Christopher J. Malloy, 2012. "Hiring Cheerleaders: Board Appointments of "Independent" Directors," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 58(6), pages 1039-1058, June.
    3. Guttman, Joel M., 2013. "On the evolution of conditional cooperation," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 15-34.
    4. Yannick Thams & Ying Liu & Mary Glinow, 2013. "Asian favors: More than a cookie cutter approach," Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Springer, vol. 30(2), pages 461-486, June.
    5. Daniel Friedman & Nirvikar Singh, 2004. "Vengefulness Evolves in Small Groups," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Steffen Huck (ed.), Advances in Understanding Strategic Behaviour, chapter 3, pages 28-54, Palgrave Macmillan.
    6. Diego Rinallo & Suman Basuroy & Ruhai Wu & Hyo Jeon, 2013. "The Media and Their Advertisers: Exploring Ethical Dilemmas in Product Coverage Decisions," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 114(3), pages 425-441, May.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Daniel Friedman & Nirvikar Singh, 2004. "Vengefulness Evolves in Small Groups," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Steffen Huck (ed.), Advances in Understanding Strategic Behaviour, chapter 3, pages 28-54, Palgrave Macmillan.
    2. Sethi, Rajiv & Somanathan, E., 2003. "Understanding reciprocity," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 50(1), pages 1-27, January.
    3. Herold, Florian, 2003. "Carrot or Stick? Group Selection and the Evolution of Reciprocal Preferences," Discussion Papers in Economics 40, University of Munich, Department of Economics.
    4. Fehr, Ernst & Henrich, Joseph, 2003. "Is Strong Reciprocity a Maladaptation? On the Evolutionary Foundations of Human Altruism," IZA Discussion Papers 712, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    5. Bicskei, Marianna & Lankau, Matthias & Bizer, Kilian, 2016. "Negative reciprocity and its relation to anger-like emotions in identity-homogeneous and -heterogeneous groups," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 17-34.
    6. Kolstad, Ivar, 2007. "The evolution of social norms: With managerial implications," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 58-72, February.
    7. Rajiv Sethi & E. Somanathan, 2001. "Norm Compliance and Strong Reciprocity," Working Papers 01-09-048, Santa Fe Institute.
    8. Ones, Umut & Putterman, Louis, 2007. "The ecology of collective action: A public goods and sanctions experiment with controlled group formation," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 62(4), pages 495-521, April.
    9. Ernst Fehr & Urs Fischbacher, 2004. "Social norms and human cooperation," Macroeconomics 0409026, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Tobias Hahn & Noël Albert, 2017. "Strong Reciprocity in Consumer Boycotts," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 145(3), pages 509-524, October.
    11. Manapat, Michael L. & Nowak, Martin A. & Rand, David G., 2013. "Information, irrationality, and the evolution of trust," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 90(S), pages 57-75.
    12. Alejandro T. Moreno-Okuno & Alejandro Mosiño, 2017. "A theory of sequential group reciprocity," Latin American Economic Review, Springer;Centro de Investigaciòn y Docencia Económica (CIDE), vol. 26(1), pages 1-19, December.
    13. Pinghan Liang & Juanjuan Meng, 2023. "Paying it forward: an experimental study on social connections and indirect reciprocity," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 27(2), pages 387-417, June.
    14. Khalil, Elias, 2004. "Integrity, Shame and Self-Rationalization," Vassar College Department of Economics Working Paper Series 55, Vassar College Department of Economics.
    15. Giorgio Coricelli, 2002. "Sequence Matters: an Experimental Study of the Effects of Experiencing Positive and Negative Reciprocity," Department of Economics University of Siena 369, Department of Economics, University of Siena.
    16. Carattini, Stefano & Gillingham, Kenneth & Meng, Xiangyu & Yoeli, Erez, 2024. "Peer-to-peer solar and social rewards: Evidence from a field experiment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 219(C), pages 340-370.
    17. Gaudeul, Alexia & Keser, Claudia & Müller, Stephan, 2021. "The evolution of morals under indirect reciprocity," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 251-277.
    18. Ben-Ner, Avner & Putterman, Louis & Kong, Fanmin & Magan, Dan, 2004. "Reciprocity in a two-part dictator game," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 53(3), pages 333-352, March.
    19. Engelmann, Dirk & Fischbacher, Urs, 2009. "Indirect reciprocity and strategic reputation building in an experimental helping game," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 67(2), pages 399-407, November.
    20. Ramalingam, Abhijit, 2009. ""Endogenous" Relative Concerns: The Impact of Workers' Characteristics on Status and Pro ts in the Firm," MPRA Paper 18759, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Altruism; reciprocity; negative reciprocity; coevolution;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C7 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory
    • D8 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wpa:wuwpga:0412003. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: EconWPA (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://econwpa.ub.uni-muenchen.de .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.