Researchers from across the social sciences have found consistent deviations from the predictions of the canonical model of self-interest in hundreds of experiments from around the world. This research, however, cannot determine whether the uniformity re- sults from universal patterns of human behavior or from the limited cultural variation available among the university students used in virtually all prior experimental work. To address this, we undertook a cross-cultural study of behavior in ultimatum, public goods, and dictator games in a range of small-scale societies exhibiting a wide variety of economic and cultural conditions. We found, first, that the canonical model - based on self-interest - fails in all of the societies studied. Second, our data reveal substantially more behavioral vari- ability across social groups than has been found in previous research. Third, group-level differences in economic organization and the structure of social interactions explain a substantial portion of the behavioral variation across societies: the higher the degree of market integration and the higher the payoffs to cooperation in everyday life, the greater the level of prosociality expressed in experimental games. Fourth, the available individual-level economic and demographic variables do not consistently explain game behavior, either within or across groups. Fifth, in many cases experimental play appears to reflect the common interactional patterns of everyday life.

/pdf/economic-man-in-cross-cultural-perspective-behavioral-34um1j2a3c.pdf

“Economic man” in cross-cultural perspective: Behavioral experiments in 15 small-scale societies

Four studies demonstrated both the power of group influence in persuasion and people's blindness to it. Even under conditions of effortful processing, attitudes toward a social policy depended almost exclusively upon the stated position of one's political party. This effect overwhelmed the impact of both the policy's objective content and participants' ideological beliefs (Studies 1-3), and it was driven by a shift in the assumed factual qualities of the policy and in its perceived moral connotations (Study 4). Nevertheless, participants denied having been influenced by their political group, although they believed that other individuals, especially their ideological adversaries, would be so influenced. The underappreciated role of social identity in persuasion is discussed.

/pdf/party-over-policy-the-dominating-impact-of-group-influence-2pic1e8wdz.pdf

Party over policy: The dominating impact of group influence on political beliefs.

The authors propose that people adopt others’ perspectives by serially adjusting from their own. As predicted, estimates of others’ perceptions were consistent with one’s own but differed in a manner consistent with serial adjustment (Study 1). Participants were slower to indicate that another’s perception would be different from - rather than similar to - their own (Study 2). Egocentric biases increased under time pressure (Study 2) and decreased with accuracy incentives (Study 3). Egocentric biases also increased when participants were more inclined to accept plausible values encountered early in the adjustment process than when inclined to reject them (Study 4). Finally, adjustments tend to be insufficient, in part, because people stop adjusting once a plausible estimate is reached (Study 5).

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID1532595_code300348.pdf?abstractid=1532595&mirid=3

Perspective Taking as Egocentric Anchoring and Adjustment

The impact of social approval and framing on cooperation in public good situations

Important asymmetries between self-perception and social perception arise from the simple fact that other people's actions, judgments, and priorities sometimes differ from one's own. This leads people not only to make more dispositional inferences about others than about themselves (E. E. Jones & R. E. Nisbett, 1972) but also to see others as more susceptible to a host of cognitive and motivational biases. Although this blind spot regarding one's own biases may serve familiar self-enhancement motives, it is also a product of the phenomenological stance of naive realism. It is exacerbated, furthermore, by people's tendency to attach greater credence to their own introspections about potential influences on judgment and behavior than they attach to similar introspections by others. The authors review evidence, new and old, of this asymmetry and its underlying causes and discuss its relation to other psychological phenomena and to interpersonal and intergroup conflict.

Objectivity in the eye of the beholder: divergent perceptions of bias in self versus others.

Contents: Preface. E.S. Reed, Selves, Values, Cultures. I.C. Uzgiris, Together and Apart: The Enactment of Values in Infancy. L.P. Nucci, Morality and the Personal Sphere of Actions. S.M. Okin, The Gendered Family and the Development of a Sense of Justice. E. Turiel, Equality and Hierarchy: Conflict in Values. L. Ross, A. Ward, Naive Realism in Everyday Life: Implications for Social Conflict and Misunderstanding. T. Brown, Values, Knowledge, and Piaget.

Edward S. Reed

Papers

Values and Knowledge

Naive Realism in Everyday Life: Implications for Social Conflict and Misunderstanding