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Altruistic punishment as an explanation of hunter-gatherer cooperation: How much has experimental economics achieved?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 January 2012

Robert Sugden
Robert Sugden
Affiliation:
School of Economics, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, United Kingdom. [email protected]://www.uea.ac.uk/eco/People_old/Faculty/rsugden
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Abstract

The discovery of the altruistic punishment mechanism as a replicable experimental result is a genuine achievement of behavioural economics. The hypothesis that cooperation in hunter-gatherer societies is sustained by altruistic punishment is a scientifically legitimate conjecture, but it must be tested against real-world observations. Guala's doubts about the evidential support for this hypothesis are well founded.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 35 , Issue 1 , February 2012 , pp. 40
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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