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Money-game experiments show cultural variances in behavior
'Suppose you win a contest with a catch: You have to share your winnings with a stranger.
The prize is $100; you can offer the stranger as much as you like, and you keep the rest - unless the stranger refuses your offer. Then you have to give all the money back, and nobody wins anything.
In theory, the stranger should take any offer, no matter how small, in order to get something rather than nothing. But in practice, most strangers reject low offers. If you offer $10, for instance, you're much more likely to walk away with zero than $90, as the stranger will probably punish you, even at personal expense.
People just don't like cheapskates. It's human nature.
Or maybe not. When economists conduct this experiment - called the "ultimatum game" - with college students, the results are pretty much the same, whether in Los Angeles, Pittsburgh or Tokyo. But college kids may not represent the entire human race. So anthropologists with economist collaborators have tried the game in small, isolated societies around the world. And the outcomes suggest that human nature isn't so universal after all.'
read the rest here...
'Suppose you win a contest with a catch: You have to share your winnings with a stranger.
The prize is $100; you can offer the stranger as much as you like, and you keep the rest - unless the stranger refuses your offer. Then you have to give all the money back, and nobody wins anything.
In theory, the stranger should take any offer, no matter how small, in order to get something rather than nothing. But in practice, most strangers reject low offers. If you offer $10, for instance, you're much more likely to walk away with zero than $90, as the stranger will probably punish you, even at personal expense.
People just don't like cheapskates. It's human nature.
Or maybe not. When economists conduct this experiment - called the "ultimatum game" - with college students, the results are pretty much the same, whether in Los Angeles, Pittsburgh or Tokyo. But college kids may not represent the entire human race. So anthropologists with economist collaborators have tried the game in small, isolated societies around the world. And the outcomes suggest that human nature isn't so universal after all.'
read the rest here...
