Gossip as an alternative for direct observation in games of indirect reciprocity

Sommerfeld, Ralf D.; Krambeck, Hans-Jürgen; Semmann, Dirk; Milinski, Manfred

doi:10.1073/pnas.0704598104

Cited by 325 publications

(323 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…Most indirect reciprocity models, however, rely on individuals communicating information about the observed actions of others (21). Fortunately, we are more than happy to talk about how others have behaved: gossip is a central element of human communication (85,86). However, why did we come to have this predilection for gossiping about the previous behavior of others?…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Powering up with indirect reciprocity in a large-scale field experiment

Yoeli

Hoffman

Rand

et al. 2013

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

244

171

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A defining aspect of human cooperation is the use of sophisticated indirect reciprocity. We observe others, talk about others, and act accordingly. We help those who help others, and we cooperate expecting that others will cooperate in return. Indirect reciprocity is based on reputation, which spreads by communication. A crucial aspect of indirect reciprocity is observability: reputation effects can support cooperation as long as peoples' actions can be observed by others. In evolutionary models of indirect reciprocity, natural selection favors cooperation when observability is sufficiently high. Complimenting this theoretical work are experiments where observability promotes cooperation among small groups playing games in the laboratory. Until now, however, there has been little evidence of observability's power to promote large-scale cooperation in real world settings. Here we provide such evidence using a field study involving 2413 subjects. We collaborated with a utility company to study participation in a program designed to prevent blackouts. We show that observability triples participation in this public goods game. The effect is over four times larger than offering a $25 monetary incentive, the company's previous policy. Furthermore, as predicted by indirect reciprocity, we provide evidence that reputational concerns are driving our observability effect. In sum, we show how indirect reciprocity can be harnessed to increase cooperation in a relevant, real-world public goods game.evolutionary game theory | experimental economics

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Powering up with indirect reciprocity in a large-scale field experiment

Yoeli

Hoffman

Rand

et al. 2013

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

244

171

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“…It has been argued that indirect reciprocity is likely to wane in large groups because of the noisy nature of information (e.g. owing to gossip [12]; but see [17,18]). In contrast, we find that people show sensitivity to noise not by a lower propensity to help but, at the aggregate level, people react to noise by higher proportions of requests for direct information (figure 2; electronic supplementary material, table S1d).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Personal experience and reputation interact in human decisions to help reciprocally

2013

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There is ample evidence that human cooperative behaviour towards other individuals is often conditioned on information about previous interactions. This information derives both from personal experience (direct reciprocity) and from experience of others (i.e. reputation; indirect reciprocity). Direct and indirect reciprocity have been studied separately, but humans often have access to both types of information. Here, we experimentally investigate information use in a repeated helping game. When acting as donor, subjects can condition their decisions to help recipients with both types of information at a small cost to access such information. We find that information from direct interactions weighs more heavily in decisions to help, and participants tend to react less forgivingly to negative personal experience than to negative reputation. Moreover, effects of personal experience and reputation interact in decisions to help. If a recipient's reputation is positive, the personal experience of the donor has a weak effect on the decision to help, and vice versa. Yet if the two types of information indicate conflicting signatures of helpfulness, most decisions to help follow personal experience. To understand the roles of direct and indirect reciprocity in human cooperation, they should be studied in concert, not in isolation.

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“…It is common-day experience that different people can assess one and the same action in different ways. While gossip can greatly help to spread information, it need not lead to consensual assessment (Sommerfeld et al, 2007).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Misunderstandings and mis-perceptions have possibly a more devastating effect than mis-implementations (see Takahashi and Mashima (2006) on the role of errors in perception). Exchange of information and opinions via gossip and other forms of communication is important, but not faultless (Sommerfeld et al, 2007;Takahashi and Mashima, 2006). …”

Section: Just As In Ohtsuki Andmentioning

confidence: 99%

The competition of assessment rules for indirect reciprocity

Uchida¹,

Sigmund

2010

Journal of Theoretical Biology

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Indirect reciprocity is one of the basic mechanisms to sustain mutual cooperation.Beneficial acts are returned, not by the recipient, but by third parties. Indirect reciprocity is based on reputation and status: it pays to provide help because this makes one more likely to receive help in turn. The mechanism depends on knowing the past behavior of other players, and assessing that behavior. There are many different systems of assessing other individuals, which can be interpreted as rudimentary moral systems (i.e. views on what is 'good' or 'bad'). In this paper, we describe the competition of some of the leading assessment rules called SUGDEN and KANDORI by analytic methods. We show that the sterner rule KANDORI has a slight advantage in the sense that KANDORI-players have more chance to earn higher payoff than SUGDEN-players in the presence of unconditional altruists. On the other hand, we see that the unconditional altruists are eliminated in the long run and that stable polymorphisms of KANDORI and SUGDEN can subsist, but that a moral consensus is realized even in those polymorphic states: all players' images are the same in each observer's eyes.

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Gossip as an alternative for direct observation in games of indirect reciprocity

Cited by 325 publications

References 40 publications

Powering up with indirect reciprocity in a large-scale field experiment

Powering up with indirect reciprocity in a large-scale field experiment

Personal experience and reputation interact in human decisions to help reciprocally

The competition of assessment rules for indirect reciprocity

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