Intensive studies on indirect reciprocity have explored rational assessment rules for maintaining cooperation and several have demonstrated the effects of the stern-judging rule. Uchida and Sasaki demonstrated that the stern-judging rule is not suitable for maintaining cooperative regimes in...

Charities operate at different levels: national, state, or local. We test the effect of the level of the organization on charitable giving in a sample of adults in two Texas communities. Subjects make four charitable giving "dictator game" decisions from a fixed amount of money provided by the...

Despite the accumulation of research on indirect reciprocity over the past 30 years and the publication of over 100,000 related papers, there are still many issues to be addressed. Here, we look back on the research that has been done on indirect reciprocity and identify the issues that have...

Indirect reciprocity is one of the major mechanisms driving the evolution of cooperation in human societies. There are two types of indirect reciprocity: upstream and downstream reciprocity. Cooperation in downstream reciprocity follows the pattern ‘You helped someone, and I will help you’,...

Paying it forward" is a behavior in which people help someone else because they were helped in the past. Although experimental evidence exists that indicates that real human beings often "pay-it-forward" even in the face of free-rider risks, the theoretical basis for the evolution of this...

Despite recent advances in reputation technologies, it is not clear how reputation systems can affect human cooperation in social networks. Although it is known that two of the major mechanisms in the evolution of cooperation are spatial selection and reputation-based reciprocity, theoretical...

We examine the impact of social distance in dictator game giving. The study is conducted in a field setting with high stakes (two days’ wages). The sample is a representative sample from eleven low-income Mexican villages. Subjects make multiple dictator decisions simultaneously, in a...

This paper introduces a strategic element into the dictator game by allowing recipients to select their dictator. Recipients are presented with the photographs of two dictators and the envelopes containing their allocations, and are then asked to select which dictator’s gift they would like to...