This course explores why good people exist from an economic and evolutionary perspective, covering the kin selection hypothesis and the reciprocity hypothesis. The repetition-reciprocity hypothesis theorizes that people act altruistically in repeated situations where there is a possibility of retaliation, but it has limitations in explaining one-off encounters or situations involving large numbers of people.
Why are there good people in the world? The existence of good people, or altruistic people, is not easily understood from an economic and evolutionary perspective. Since selfish people who look out for their own interests have a much better chance of survival, many scholars have questioned how altruistic humans emerged and survived. One such hypothesis is the kin selection hypothesis, which states that people are altruistic because their genes are mixed, meaning they are related. However, there were many phenomena that could not be explained by saying that people behave altruistically because of blood, and the hypothesis that emerged to explain these phenomena is the repetition-reciprocity hypothesis. In this article, I will explain what the repetition-reciprocity hypothesis is and what its limitations are.
To understand the iteration-reciprocity hypothesis, we first need to understand what the reciprocity hypothesis is. Let’s start with the word “reciprocity”. It’s a combination of the kanji for mutual favor and the word for grace, hui, which means to share grace by helping each other. This heartwarming hypothesis of reciprocity is actually a sobering statement from the Code of Hammurabi: “Rule with an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth!” To be more precise, the strategy is that when you don’t know what the other person will do to you, you act “cooperatively” first, but if they are “cooperative” with you, you act “cooperatively” with them, and if they “betray” you, you betray them. This may seem like a difficult concept to explain. An easy example of this is in messengers such as KakaoTalk, where you decide whether or not to reply to someone based on their demeanor. This behavior, known by the neologism “read and chew” (read and ignore), is also based on the principle of reciprocity. If the other person is cooperative by replying to your messages right away, you will usually respond to their messages right away. On the other hand, if the other person doesn’t read your messages and doesn’t reply to them, or doesn’t even bother to read them, you’re likely to be less likely to send them messages or reply to them. This principle of reciprocity is easier to recognize than you might think.
However, there are situations that cannot be explained by the reciprocity hypothesis alone. What if a person doesn’t return the favor and acts selfishly without realizing it? The Repetition-Reciprocity Hypothesis addresses the weakness that the reciprocity principle may not hold in such situations. The core idea of the Repetition-Reciprocity Hypothesis is that the principle of reciprocity may not apply in situations where people exchange something with each other only once, but with a high probability, the principle of reciprocity will apply in situations where such transactions are repeated. In other words, if there are repeated transactions, exchanges, and interactions between people, people will act altruistically in accordance with the principle of reciprocity.
But why do repeated situations elicit reciprocity? This can be understood in terms of “reciprocity,” where people’s altruistic behavior isn’t because they’re so nice and good-natured, but because they’re returning the favors and hostility they’ve received. People build trust and cooperation through repeated interactions, and these relationships can be beneficial in the long run. That’s why altruistic behavior is more frequent in ongoing relationships than in one-off encounters without repeated interactions.
It’s important to note that the repetition-reciprocity hypothesis is not a complete answer to the question of how altruistic humans emerged and survived after all. The repetition-reciprocity hypothesis requires the possibility of retaliation in order to be true, which limits the situations it can explain. This is a fundamental limitation of the repetition-reciprocity hypothesis, as it doesn’t account for cases where people are kind to people they are unlikely to see again, such as giving directions to a stranger on the side of the road. Another problem is that people act altruistically to avoid retaliation. In a one-on-one situation, it’s clear who betrayed you, and you can retaliate with certainty because you’ll know right away. However, in a multi-party situation, it’s not always clear who betrayed you and who you should retaliate against, which weakens the power of retribution as a driver of altruistic behavior. For example, suppose 10 people pooled their money to buy 5 chickens. Each person should have paid 10,000 won, but only 8 people paid and ended up eating only 4 chickens. A, who paid 10,000 won, will be upset that he got less than the half chicken he expected, and will naturally want to retaliate against the person who didn’t pay. So the next time the same 10 people order pizza, A will not pay to retaliate against the person who didn’t pay. In this case, can we say that A has retaliated against the exact person who didn’t pay? Or is he just victimizing the innocent person who paid both times? This is one of the limitations of the repetition-reciprocity hypothesis, as it is based on the notion of retaliation, which is highly contextualized.
So far, we’ve been exploring the Repetition-Reciprocity Hypothesis by starting with the Reciprocity Hypothesis and developing it into a recurring situation. The repetition-reciprocity hypothesis states that the principle of reciprocity, which states that people act altruistically because they are afraid of retaliation, and return favors with favors and enemies with enemies, is mostly established in repeated situations. Although it relies on retaliation and has limitations that make it difficult to explain non-recurring events, the repetition-reciprocity hypothesis has been successful in explaining the emergence of altruistic humans in a simple way. Another value of the repetition-reciprocity hypothesis is that other hypotheses have been proposed to explain cases of altruistic or reciprocal humans that cannot be explained by the repetition-reciprocity hypothesis.
In addition to the reciprocity hypothesis, there are many other theories that explain human altruistic behavior. For example, there’s the indirect reciprocity hypothesis, which emphasizes indirect rewards or social reputation over direct retribution. According to this hypothesis, people act altruistically because their altruistic behavior will be noticed by others and they will gain a good reputation as a result. This reputation plays an important role in building trust and cooperation within society in the long run. Therefore, to fully understand human altruistic behavior, we need to consider a variety of different hypotheses and theories.
