A Cross-Societal Comparison of Cooperative Dispositions and Norm Enforcement

1. A Cross-Societal Comparison of Cooperative Dispositions andNorm Enforcement Jonathan Schulz Harvard University Department of Human Evolutionary Department with Till Weber, Benjamin Beranek, Simon Gächter and Fatima Lambarraa 24 Jan 2019 Support from the European Research Council grant ERC-AdG 295707 COOPERATION is gratefully acknowledged.

2. Cooperation is essential for well-functioning large scale societies

3. Societal difference in cooperative behaviour Cooperation (first-period PGG w/o pun.) Gächter, Schulz & Thoeni (in prep.)

4. Cooperation and macro-level indicators

5. Research question: What are the roles of beliefs and attitudes? • People tend to reciprocate kind/unkind actions based on beliefs about the behaviour of others (Fischbacher & Gächter 2010) • Experimental framework: Measures of attitudes and beliefs combined account for behaviour (Gächteret al. 2017) • Attitudes (): Strategy method • Beliefs (): Not measured in cross-societal studies • Are societal differences in cooperative behaviour • Through the attitudes channel? • Through the belief channel? Or both? Research question 2: Does norm enforcement differ?

6. Research strategy: cross-societal study • Strategy: Compare variation of experimental measures across and within cultural clusters • Inglehart & Baker (2000) define cultural clusters of countries with common values and beliefs • ‘Islamic countries’: Morocco, Turkey • ‘English-speaking countries’: UK, US • Idea: Larger behavioural variation across clusters than within

7. Societal differences

8. Participants and procedures • Student samples: similar socio-economic background • Same games and experimental protocol across countries • Payoffs reflect local purchasing power

9. Experimental design • One-shot public goods game (PGG) with strategy method following Fischbacheret al. (2001) • Payoff: • Sequence of the experiment: A-Game Unconditional contribution () Contribution table () Incentivised belief elicitation () P-Game One-shot PGG with peer punishment Survey Questionnaire & Payoff

10. Results: Unconditional contribution Unconditional contribution () • As in previous research: Differences in behaviour across cultural clusters • What explains the difference in behaviour across clusters? *** n.s. n.s. MO Error bars indicate the 95% CI. (Pooled) Mann-Whitney test: n.s. p ≥ 0.1; *** p < 0.01.

11. Cooperative attitudes: strategy method • Free Riders (FR): all zero contributions • Conditional Cooperators (CC): positive correlation between own and others’ contributions, i.e. positive reciprocity Your conditional contribution to the project (contribution table): 1 0 5 0 11 0 1 0 5 0 0 12 14 0 7 2 0 0 6 0 12 0 2 0 8 13 0 8 15 1 2 9 16 0 3 9 0 0 14 10 3 17 0 4 0 10 15 0 11 4 18 0 4 0 10 0 15 5 19 12 20 6 13

12. Cooperative attitudes: types • Large share of CC suggests beliefs matter • Share of FR varies across societies Others 44% 35% 24% 32% 22% 11% Free Riders (FR) 20% 57% Conditional Cooperators (CC) 8% 55% 49% 45%

13. Cooperative attitudes: Conditional contribution Regression analysis: similar slopes, but significant differences comparing Morocco and Turkey (~0.1 lower)

14. Beliefs Unconditional belief () • Expected contributions of others are lower in MO & TR • Large within-cluster variation when comparing MO & TR • Similar accuracy in beliefs • How important are beliefs and attitudes in explaining behaviour? *** n.s. *** MO Error bars indicate the 95% CI. (Pooled) Mann-Whitney test: n.s. p ≥ 0.1; *** p < 0.01.

15. Determinants of unconditional contribution Culture, Cooperativeness and Norm Enforcement

16. Summary: Determinants of cooperative behaviour • People are conditional co-operators  beliefs matter • Cooperative attitudes similar across societies (even though quantitively small differences between clusters)

17. Do preference for norm enforcement differ?: The free-rider problem

18. Social punishment Experiment: group members can pay 1 MU, to reduce the income of the punished by 3 MUs.

19. Peer punishment stabilizes cooperation…

20. Herrmann et al. (2008): Repeated PGG with peer punishment

21. Herrmann et al. (2008): Repeated PGG with peer punishment Does it hold in the absence of repeated interactions?

22. The punishment game: Design • One-shot public goods game (PGG) with peer punishment • Fine-to-fee ratio = 2:1 • Payoff: • Sequence of the P-Game: P-Game Contribution to PG and belief about others’ contribution Peer punishment stage () Self-reported emotions

23. Contributions and beliefs • Difference in contributions across cultural clusters • Difference in beliefs across cultural clusters Belief Contribution *** *** n.s. n.s. * *** MO MO

24. Analysis of punishment • Punishment mostly targets at defectors (TR, UK, US) • Punishment is rarely used in MO • Very little antisocial punishment across all countries • Higher for English-speaking countries “pro-social punishment” “antisocial punishment” Linear combination of coefficients from a pooled OLS regression. Error bars indicate ±1 SEM.

25. Results: Social emotions • Anger is a proximate explanation for punishment (Fehr & Gächter 2000) • Guilt influence effectiveness of punishment (Hopfensitz & Reuben 2009) Intensity of emotion Intensity of emotion

26. Discussion • Key findings: • Cooperative attitudes are comparable across the two cultural clusters included in this study • Variation in beliefs help to explain differences in behaviour • Levels of antisocial punishment small in all four societies • Considerable within-cluster variation comparing MO & TR • Policy interventions targeting beliefs can change behaviour • Antisocial punishment might root in strategic incentives which exist in repeated games