The Rejection of Hyperfair Offers by Player 2s

• “Ashamed; and pity for the other person.” [cash] • “I’d be happy, but it would be mixed with shame because the other person has nothing.” [cash] • “It doesn’t feel right that I should get it all.” [cash] • “Not good because then Player 1 would have nothing.” [cash] • “A bit ashamed because the other person has nothing.” [cash] • “Happy, but pity for the other.” [cash] • “Happy, but a little embarrassed and sorry for the other person.” [cash] • “I would feel sad for the other person.” [betel nut] • “Perhaps a bit sorry for the other person.” [betel nut] • “I would be embarrassed.” [betel nut] • “I would be happy, but only if the other person were also happy.” [betel nut] • “It wouldn’t be right.” [betel nut] • “I would feel ashamed.” [betel nut] • “Worried about the other person.” [betel nut] • “Not good.” [betel nut] • “It wouldn’t be right; I’d feel pity for the other person.” [betel nut] • “Embarrassment mixed with happiness.” [betel nut] • “I wouldn’t feel good; a bit ashamed.” [betel nut] • “I would want to turn around and give the other person five back.” [betel nut] • “Not very happy because the other person will be sad.” [betel nut] • “A little upset; sorry for the other person.” [betel nut] The sense that something would be relationally amiss in the event of accepting a hyperfair offer is a corollary of the 50–50 default norm, and is reflected both in the rejections of ultra-high offers as well as the comments about such offers. Second, comparing comments about cash and betel nut games shows that there are no significant differences in responses. During post-game interviews, I asked if the games were like aspects of traditional or customary life Sursurunga: tatalen ; Neo-Melanesian: laip bilong ples. Table 11 shows the results: Table 11: Responses to the Question “Does This Game Remind You of Something in Customary Life?” Cash Betel Nut Different from Customary Life 28 19 Similar to Customary Life 27 38 χ 2 = 0.058305 not significant The numerical data, statistical test, and oral reports corroborate each other in support of the claim that the media used in the experimental games do not have a significant effect on the results. In short, the decision-making algorithm that is used for the cash games is 1 either the same one that is used for the betel nut games—and can therefore be understood as “traditional” with the corollary that cash games do indeed tap traditional decision-making—or 2 the two exchange media trigger two different decision-making strategies which, by coincidence produce the same results. Until or unless there is evidence for the latter, Occam and I prefer the former explanation. 6 Conclusion The use of cash in experimental games can, on conceptual grounds, be challenged along the lines of an argument that asserts, a priori, that money evokes a specialized capitalistic decision-making module. Following this line of reasoning, the use of cash cross-culturally in such games reveals little about pan- human exchange strategies, and would most likely be seen to be an artifact of globalization. The results presented here, however, constitute a preemptive empirical strike against such ideas. The foregoing account of the controlled comparative use of both cash and a traditional medium of exchange shows that the results of experimental games using cash cannot be rejected unless it can be shown, using the same sort of approach demonstrated in the foregoing, that for a particular site, cash is an unworkable and confounding medium. The one question that still has no answer—and which will have to remain unanswered—is the one that addresses exchange strategies on the part of those populations for whom money is a largely novel exchange medium. Certainly, Karl Franklin would be in a position to suggest an educated guess about how the Kewa would have carried out Dictator and Ultimatum cash games in his early days among them and how that would have compared to traditional, local exchange media. References Bolyanatz, Alexander H. 2000. Mortuary feasting on New Ireland: The activation of matriliny among the Sursurunga . Westport, Connecticut: Bergin Garvey. Boyd, Robert, Herbert Gintis, Samuel Bowles, and Peter J. Richerson. 2003. The evolution of altruistic punishment. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 1006:3531–3535. Fehr, Ernst, and Simon Gachter. 2000. Cooperation and punishment in public goods experiments. The American Economic Review 90:980–994. Gintis, Herbert. 2003. The hitchhikers guide to altruism: Gene-culture coevolution, and the internalization of norms. Journal of Theoretical Biology 220:407–418. Henrich, Joseph, Robert Boyd, Samuel Bowles, Colin Camerer, Ernst Fehr, and Herbert Gintis, eds. 2004. Foundations of human sociality: Economic experiments and ethnographic evidence from fifteen small-scale societies . New York: Oxford University Press.