Moral Sentiments and Material Interests, Herbert Gintis, Samuel Bowles, Robert Boyd, and Ernst Fehr
Some interesting conclusions from the various experiments conducted:
- Employees’ effort levels increased significantly when their bosses gainted the power to punish and reward them. Underfulfilling contracts dropped from eighty-three to twenty-six percent of the exchanges… (15)
- Public Goods: The subjects’ own explanation of the decay of cooperation after the experiment is that cooperative subjects became angry with others who contributed less than themselves and retaliated against free-riding low contributors in the only way available to them–by lowering their own contributions (16)
- How does this play out at Yoga to the People? Or can it, because all donations are relatively anonymous?
- When costly punishment is permitted, cooperation does not deteriorate, and in the partner game, despite strict anonymity, cooperation increases to almost full cooperation… (17)
- 75% of the punishment acts…were executed by above-average contributors
- Crowding Out: When monetary incentives are added in an attempt to increase the level of the activity, the level actually decreases. This occurs because the voluntary, community-regulated, system of restraints breaks down in the face of relatively ineffective formal government sanctions (20)
- Strong Reciprocity: People are not subject to social opprobrium for failing to punish those who hurt them (Judeo-Christian culture) (23)
- We in fact are quite attuned to varying degrees of relatedness and propinquity
- Coughing baby scenario, Radiolab
Paradoxes of Group Life, chapter 5, Kenwyn K. Smith and David N. Berg
Smith and Berg illustrate four paradoxes of belonging: identity, involvement, individuality, and boundaries.
The paradox of identity is filled with simultaneous actions, seemingly in conflict. Any individual thought “is filled with a logic that views the group’s character as different from and independent of the actions of its members” (92). In fact, individual actions help form the group character and vice-versa. The paradox gets more interesting when the identities of the individuals are caught up in history, pattern, and stereotype. “The natural response of the group is to resist” an individual’s desire to act not in accordance with his/her expected role (94). That is, a woman wanting to work-full time and/or a man wanting to be a caretaker force a kind of integration that is difficult for a group.
The paradox of involvement also involves a struggle with simultaneity. In the example of Walt and his co-workers, the group had to go to an extreme of involvement, “virtually losing key boundaries,” in order to step back and find the right balance of involvement with each other (98). This paradox requires that “we observe while we experience…[and] to develop the level of detachment necessary for self-reflection demands a kind of involvement that makes detachment appear impossible” (99).
The paradox of individuality seems the most psychological, pointing to emotions and desires of individuals. The desire to be individualistic must coexist with the desire to be part of a group. This tension creates a struggle when joining groups (“individuals come to a group looking for what they can get…[but] if it turns out that others are in this group because they have similar inadequacies, what the individual expects to be demanded of him or her is a contribution from the very well that is already dry…”) and a tendency towards heroicism (101).
The paradox of boundaries I found the most interesting. Smith and Berg point to language and labeling as an example: “the deep paradox is that were it not for the symbols, experiences could not be stored…yet, at the same time, those very symbols constrain the ways we are able to experience both the past and the future” (104). When a label is used, it creates a kind of descriptive boundary, as in the example of an “enemy” vs. a “friend.” Because of the labels used and the consequential boundaries created, a group of people is treated a certain way and their actions interpreted a certain way.
