The WSJ has an interesting article in the front section about game theory, specifically a game which allows players to pool resources and receive rewards. In order to test how different cultures deal with collaboration – and, just as importantly, non-contributors – players are allowed to hoard their own resources and still share in the general spoils, thus becoming freeloaders. The next twist is to allow contributors to punish freeloaders, which in many cultures shames them into contributing to the general fund.
Many cultures, but not all:
Among students in the U.S., Switzerland, China and the U.K., those identified as freeloaders most often took their punishment as a spur to contribute more generously. But in Oman, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Greece and Russia, the freeloaders more often struck back, retaliating against those who punished them, even against those who had given most to everyone’s benefit. It was akin to rapping the knuckles of the helping hand.
Interesting.
Great find! Excellent article.
I read this article too, and thought about posting on it.
Great job! Game theory’s cool!!
Some time ago I was doing some reading about the development of early Polynesian societies and rise/fall of different social models relative to their mechanics and morality. The article (I’d be interested to read the paper that is produced by the research) doesn’t discuss the probable causal factors of agent (participant) behavior, which is somewhat disappointing.
On a side note, one of the things that I fear will result from this is not a dialogue on the mechanisms of social interaction, but a bunch of nationalist chest thumping about reprisals and so forth.
According to what I have read (and social simulations run by various people), purely egalitarian societies tend to survive very well in small numbers due to the pressure from the group to maintain the status quo. Meaning that resource sharing and contributions to the overall good are maintained in order to ensure that overall group cohesion and survivability stay above a minimum threshold.
However, once population density reaches approximately 1,000 people violence enters the picture and things become far more complex. The reason being for this is that we are, in my opinion, apparently wired (in some biological way) to understand that certain population sizes must be maintained in order to preserve an acceptable gene pool. Groups above this 1,000 individual size allow for parallel competitive interests to rise and competition (sometimes violent) to occur.
This particular case allows for live agents (meaning real people) to either share, hoard, or punish other agents for not contributing to the overall social good. The results as put forth by the article meet directly with the results of the social simulations I’ve seen before where groups with either very low or very high levels of tolerance tend to survive whereas those with moderate levels fail.
This also agrees with sociological research on groups that I mentioned earlier, specifically Australian Aborigines and Inuit, tend to have low tolerance levels for deviant behavior, high motivations to pool collective resources, and established procedures for dealing with non-compliance (such as ostracism).
The article seems to me to ask a fairly obvious question as to why “freeloaders” from community/family oriented authoritarian societies punish others that contribute more when attacked. Simply, the dynamics of their own environment shaped these responses due to the nature of how sharing is implemented at these levels.
The fatal flaw with this experiment (in my opinion) is that it fails to account for the fact that people from non-nuclear family backgrounds will likely assume on some default level that their resources are not their own, but belong to community first. Therefore, people that share more are robbing from the family-kin-tribe resource pool and their motivations to do so may be questionable. As a result, with a social motivation to preserve individual-unit resources, sudden attacks on their lack of sharing are (as seems to me to be suggested here) seen as originating from those who are depleting their own resource pool to contribute to an amorphous and vaguely defined “collective good.”
Effectively, these individuals already recognize that they do not need to contribute until a certain threshold is reached. They would naturally preserve resources and allow others to contribute, understanding that there will come an appropriate time for them to do so when others were no longer able to do so.
This also seems to be a scaled up version of the “Prisoner’s Dilemma,” which is what I think that Lex was getting at with the title of this post.
Apologies for foaming at the mouth here. Twice in two days I’ve done this.
Drew, you took a long way around to say what we know from hard experience: tribalism works damned well to guarantee survival of the group, but at the cost of the individual. A system that supports the rights of the individual to keep and invest his own capital can produce incredible wealth and good for all people, but it is always endangered by a tribe.
Historically, I always cite Mohammed’s true genius as that he found a way to expand his tribe infinitely–one didn’t have to be born into it, but could join it by adhering to the creed he propagated. Mohammedanism is nothing more than tribalism writ large. And in the West, it almost seems as if our great victories against Islam have been accidents and flukes, from Tours to Lepanto to Vienna, because we have always been bickering among ourselves rather than responding as a challenged tribe. Something to chew on.
Those of us who have lived in both a small town and a big city understand this intuitively. Small town culture is to a large degree a function of accountability. You are an identifiable member of a community. You will be recognized and held accountable, for better or worse.
In the big city, you are blended in the crowd, and are both more free and less accountable for your actions.
Zane … you’re 100% on the money here. This is an extremely sapient observation on human nature in general and the inherent dangers of Mohammedanism in general. I think our tendency toward tolerance and acceptance of individual freedom has gotten us into a tight bind here. The evil of political correctness is that it encourages intellectual laziness. Yes, indeedy, some cultures are better than others, and eventually you’ll have to choose which ones you’ll accept and even encourage and which ones you won’t.
That’s what grown-ups do, even though it’s difficult, as all you folks commenting here know.
Otherwise, you wake up one morning and the barbarians are in charge.
Marianne
By the way, Lex and friends … is the “game theory” we’re discussing here John Von Neumann’s Game Theory [i'e' strategy in poker, business and war]? Von Neumann was director of the Electronic Computer Project at the Institute for Advanced Study when I worked there as a lowly purchasing assistant in 1951 through 1953. And he did have a fatal flaw — he did like to look up ladies’ dresses when he got the chance. But then, even geniuses can be human too. And we wore a lot more underwear then.
Marianne
From the article:
“Among those punished, differences emerged immediately. Students in Seoul, Istanbul, Minsk in Belarus, Samara in Russia, Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, Athens, and Muscat in Oman were most likely to take revenge by deducting points from other players — and to give up a token themselves to do it.”
I’m trying to think of what Belarus, S Korea, Russia, Oman, Saudi, and Greece all have in common. Can’t come up with a thing. Different governments, population sizes, religions…
Gosh, you mean different cultures really are, well, uhh… different?