Social exchange and reciprocity: confusion or a heuristic?

We propose that a “social exchange heuristic” is as important as the cheater detection mechanism for attaining mutual cooperation in social exchange. The social exchange heuristic prompts people to perceive a mixed-motive situation, such as the Prisoner's Dilemma (PD), as an Assurance Game (AG) situation in which cooperation is a personally better choice than defection insofar as the partner is cooperating as well. We demonstrate the operation of the social exchange heuristic through a comparison of the ordinary one-shot, simultaneous PD with the one-shot, sequential PD. Participants in the current experiments, involving a total of 261 volunteers, committed a logical error in the direction of favoring mutual cooperation as the situation involved more serious consequences. This result strongly suggests the operation of a domain specific “bias” that encourages pursuit of mutual cooperation in social exchange.     

Yam is King! But Cassava is the Mother of all Crops: Farming, Culture, and Identity in Igbo Agrarian Economy

The history of Igbo scholarship has benefits from pioneer scholars such as Victor Uchendu, Ikenna Nzimiro, Don Ohadike, Michael Mbabuike, Ezenwa-Ohaeto, and Angela Uwalaka, among many others. Collectively, their scholarship defined the contours of Igbo political economy, anthropology, and sociology, and linguistic. As an agricultural people, the history of the Igbo people was defined by their relationship to the land and their ecology. These scholars, to whom I humbly devote this piece, have touched upon the changing nature of Igbo political economy as much as the link between Igbo agriculture and their identity.     

Public Goods Games in Japan

Social dilemmas, in which individually selfish behavior leads to collectively deficient outcomes, continue to be an important topic of research because of their ubiquity. The present research with Japanese participants replicates, with slight modifications, public goods games previously run in the United States. In contrast to recent work showing profound cross-cultural differences, the results of two studies reported here show remarkable cross-cultural similarities. Specifically, results suggest that (1) as in the U.S., allowing incremental commitment to a public good is effective at eliciting contributions, (2) individual differences in trust affect contributions, (3) the distribution of player types in the U.S. and Japan are very similar, and (4) the dynamics of play in the public goods games used here are strikingly parallel. These results are discussed in the context of the relationship between cross-cultural differences and economic institutional environments.

Book Review Essay: Mary Angela Uwalaka. Ọfọ: Its Juridical and Linguistic Potency. Ibadan, Afrika-Link Books, 1996. 69 pages

Rev. Mother (Dr.) Mary Angela Uwalaka was a distinguished and devoted religious woman linguist. Her major area of research was Igbo syntax, where she made tremendous contributions, through published texts and scholarly articles towards the development of a unified Igbo language and the field of Linguistics. As a renowned scholar, her research interest was not limited to Linguistics only. In the words of Prof. Ben Elugbe, her colleague at the University of Ibadan where Mother Uwalaka worked until her demise in January 7 2007, she also “found time and ability to work and publish in the areas of religion and Igbo culture.” Ọfọ: Its Juridical and Linguistic Potency, which we shall review here, is an evidence that Uwalaka’s interests extended to other areas of Igbo studies, apart from the Igbo language.     

A comparison of pectoral fin contact between two different wild dolphin populations

Contact behaviour involving the pectoral fin has been documented in a number of dolphin species, and various explanations about its function have been offered. Pectoral fin contact can take a variety of forms, and involves a number of body parts and movements, likely differing depending upon social or ecological context. For this study, we compare the pectoral fin contact behaviour of two species of wild dolphins: Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops aduncus) from around Mikura Island, Japan, and Atlantic spotted dolphins (Stenella frontalis) from The Bahamas. The two study populations exhibit surprising similarity in the ways in which pectoral fin contacts are used, despite differences in species and environmental conditions at the two sites. Differences in contact rates for calves between the two sites suggest that calf-focused aggression from adult dolphins is more prevalent at Mikura than in The Bahamas. Our results suggest that pectoral fin contact behaviour seems to be driven primarily by social pressures, and may be similar in function to allogrooming described in primates.     

Social discounting: The effect of outcome uncertainty

The purpose of the study was to determine the lowest hypothetical amount a participant would keep for himself/herself, preferring it over a reward that he/she would have shared with another individual representing various levels of past reciprocation. Other manipulated aspects were: emotional closeness of the receiver (close vs. distant person), procedure for deciding on how to share the reward (mutual decision vs. decision made by partner) and amount of reward to be shared (PLN 494 vs. PLN 49,400). It was found that preference for the reward to be shared increased as a function of reciprocity, and that it is higher when sharing with an emotionally close person, when the decision does not depend entirely on the partner, and when sharing a small reward. The effect of the level of reciprocity was the smallest when the reward was shared with an emotionally close person and the decision was mutual.     

African Ethnicity as Mirage? Historicizing the Essence of the Igbo in Africa and the Atlantic Diaspora

The enslavement of Africans, which gave birth to the African Diaspora in the Atlantic world, scattered people who shared the same cultural and linguistic affinity but often lumped them together in identifiable regional patterns. A significant consequence of the pattern of trade was the emergence of identifiable “ethnic” and cultural patterns in the diaspora. Attention, therefore, has for a long time focused on the pattern of dispersion and the impact of the Atlantic slave trade on the emergence of New World cultures. This paper addresses what I call the “question of Igbo history, ethnicity and identity,” with a view to presenting a synthesis and a framework for understanding the essence of ndiIgbo as flexible in both Africa and the Atlantic Diaspora. The case of the Igbo suggests that identities are multi-layered, self imposed, as well as ascribed by others and as such require a critical analysis to avoid the essentialism that have bedeviled much of the discourse on African identity in the diaspora     

Evolution of indirect reciprocity by social information: the role of trust and reputation in evolution of altruism

The complexity of human's cooperative behavior cannot be fully explained by theories of kin selection and group selection. If reciprocal altruism is to provide an explanation for altruistic behavior, it would have to depart from direct reciprocity, which requires dyads of individuals to interact repeatedly. For indirect reciprocity to rationalize cooperation among genetically unrelated or even culturally dissimilar individuals, information about the reputation of individuals must be assessed and propagated in a population. Here, we propose a new framework for the evolution of indirect reciprocity by social information: information selectively retrieved from and propagated through dynamically evolving networks of friends and acquaintances. We show that for indirect reciprocity to be evolutionarily stable, the differential probability of trusting and helping a reputable individual over a disreputable individual, at a point in time, must exceed the cost-to-benefit ratio of the altruistic act. In other words, the benefit received by the trustworthy must out-weigh the cost of helping the untrustworthy.     

A comparison of pectoral fin contact behaviour for three distinct dolphin populations

Tactile exchanges involving the pectoral fin have been documented in a variety of dolphin species. Several functions (e.g., social, hygienic) have been offered as possible explanations for when and why dolphins exchange pectoral fin contacts. In this study, we compared pectoral fin contact between dolphin dyads from three distinct dolphin populations: two groups of wild dolphins; Atlantic spotted dolphins (Stenella frontalis) from The Bahamas and Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops aduncus) from around Mikura Island, Japan; and one group of captive bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) residing at the Roatan Institute for Marine Sciences, Anthony's Key Resort. A number of similarities were observed between the captive and wild groups, including; rates of pectoral fin contact, which dolphin initiated contact, posture preference, and same-sex rubbing partner preference. Unlike their wild counterparts, however, dolphins in the captive study group engaged in petting and rubbing at equal rates, females were more likely to contact males, males assumed the various rubbing roles more frequently than females, and calves and juveniles were more likely to be involved in pectoral fin contact exchanges. These results suggest that some aspects of pectoral fin contact behaviour might be common to many dolphin species, whereas other aspects could be species specific, or could be the result of differing environmental and social conditions.     

Tipping points among social learners: Tools from varied disciplines

There is a long and rich tradition in the social sciences of using models of collective behavior in animals as jumprag-off points for the study of human behavior,including collective human behavior.Here,we come at the problem in a slightly different fashion.We ask whether models of collective human behavior have anything to offer those who study animal behavior.Our brief example of tipping points,a model first developed in the physical sciences and later used in the social sciences,suggests that the analysis of human collective behavior does indeed have considerable to offer [Current Zoology 58 (2):298-306,2012].     

Who Killed Biafra?

Stanley Diamond opens his essay with a euphoric statement by C.O. Ojukwu, the leader of Biafra, who defined Biafra’s endeavour and its relevance to pan-Africanism as the “potential of the black man ... the breaking of the chains” that would demonstrate that the “basis of neo–colonialism has been removed; which is continued economic dominance,” in 1969. This historic milestone still has not been achieved as we concur with the author who in 1970 went on to analyze the reasons for this failure within the context of the larger global frame of reference as applied to the local scene in Nigeria. Diamond’s analysis is still valid and even increasingly relevant in view of globalization, ongoing wars, and current geo-strategic and oil interests confronting our world today. The Igbo people in general and their intellectuals—including the honourees of this special issue—were all affected by the struggle over Biafra in one way or the other. The article is divided into four segments: The first part begins with the defeat of Biafra by Nigeria’s federal forces and offers an account of the Igbo people’s heroic struggle against overwhelming military and economic powers, contextualized within global strategic and business interests. Biafra was indebted to no European country for support, bought whatever supplies were available from just a few sources—some African countries, Portugal, China, and the Czech Rep., and from private companies—all with cash. Biafra largely manufactured her own arms, and received only non-political Joint Church Aid assistance. Nigeria, on the other hand was aided by both Russia (then the Soviet Union), and the North-Atlantic Alliance (particularly Nigeria’s former colonial master, Britain)—as well as by much of Moslem North Africa, with Egyptian pilots flying Russian-made MIGs against the breakaway enclave which had no air force of its own. The humanitarian disaster unfolding in Biafra where 2 million people were killed and a generation of children was starved to death was grossly ignored and understated by the world powers. The second part examines British support for Nigeria against her post-colonial history and political development on the one hand, and the Igbos' ethnic and cultural idiosyncrasies on the other. Diamond characterizes the Igbo people as pan-Africanist nation builders, who were originally in strong support of a Nigeria they conceived as universal and egalitarian, but who later became disenchanted with the country’s post/neo-colonial developments, He accounts for the subtleties of the Igbo language and praises the culture as exceedingly democratic, exhibiting gender equilibrium, resisting foreign domination, despising acculturation, displaying restiveness under British oppression, yet endowed with a passion for modern education, He notes that Igbos made up for 2/3 of all Nigerian students in the USA_’ a dynamic group committed to upward social mobility. Despite his dated terminology—writing of the “lbo” rather than the “Igbo” and characterizing then civilization as “primitive,”¹—Diamond’s admiration and sympathy for the Igbo people and their culture is clearly evident. He further identifies Nigeria’s internal cultural dynamics and especially the differences between her feudal North and democratic Southeast, as an economic threat to the Nigerian federation and thus to foreign - especially British - economic and strategic interests. To Diamond, this is the overriding rationale behind the overwhelming foreign support for the federation. The article’s third part further analyzes foreign interests and politics and their bearing on the conflict over Biafra. In particular, Russian and British geo-political strategies emerge as competing in outdoing each other over their support of and friendship with Nigeria’s Islamic North in an effort to cement their relations to the Mediterranean Islamic associations, whereby oil interests became intensified, even though they were not the primary cause of the conflict over Biafra. China mostly expressed sympathy for Biafra and emerged as the ideological winner over Russia’s declared materialist goals. In the fourth section, Diamond concludes that the Nigerian civil war was not only an example of biological, but also cultural, genocide, aiming not only at the physical extinction of Biafra, but as well the collapse of the Igbo universe, because of the cultural possibilities of the Igbo as a people, Luckily, the Igbo people are well and alive today, striving throughout the world, and as resiliently as ever pursuing their careers, cherishing and grooming their language and their culture—37 years after Biafra. Sabine, Jell- New York, May 2007.     

Intrusive Traits of Victor Chikezie Uchendu

Reflections of a former student and colleague of Professor Victor Chikezie Uchendu, author of The Igbo of South East Nigeria. This tribute reflects on his major contributions to knowledge and what a loss that the academic community suffered at the hands of his assassins.     

Reciprocity and communication of partner quality

In a cooperative exchange, the size of a partner''s contribution is likely to depend both on the partner''s ability to supply help and on the partner''s need for help in return. Referring to such needs and abilities as aspects of partner quality, it follows that variation in the amount of help offered in a relationship could transmit information about partner quality. A plausible behaviour might then be to vary the investment in a partner according to available information about partner quality and to invest little in a partner who offers little in return. Thus, regulation of a relationship through communication of partner quality would tend to follow the principle of reciprocity. In an analysis of an iterated game where players have private information about their needs and abilities, I verify this possibility by describing an evolutionarily stable state space strategy, referred to as ''state-dependent reciprocity'', entailing communication of partner quality. Although the evolution of cooperation has been studied in great detail, there has been no previous analysis of communication of needs and abilities in a relationship. It may well be that such communication is of major importance for the evolution of cooperative behaviour in nature.     

Health and income inequalities in Europe: What is the role of circumstances?

Equality of opportunity theories distinguish between inequalities due to individual effort and those due to external circumstances. Recent research has shown that half of the variability in income of World population was determined by country of birth and income distribution. Since health and income are generally strictly related, the aim of this paper is to estimate how much variability in income and health is determined by external circumstances. We use data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement (SHARE) and the English Longitudinal Survey on Ageing (ELSA), two comparable multidisciplinary surveys that provide micro-level data on health and financial resources among the elderly for a large number of European countries. Our baseline estimation shows that about 20% of the variability in income is explained by current country-specific circumstances, while health outcomes range from 12% using BMI to 19% using self-rated health. By including early-life circumstances, the explained variability increases almost 20 percentage points for income and for self-rated health but less for other health outcomes. Finally, by controlling for endogeneity issues linked with effort, our estimates indicate that circumstances better explain variability in health outcomes. Results are robust to some tests, and the implications of these findings are discussed.     

Burials and Belonging in Nigeria: Rural–Urban Relations and Social Inequality in a Contemporary African Ritual

In sub-Saharan Africa, rural–urban relationships are primary arenas in which social change is shaped, expressed, and contested. Like people in many contemporary African societies, rural–urban migrants of the Igbo ethnic group in Nigeria face powerful expectations to be buried "at home" in their ancestral villages and to perform elaborate and expensive funeral ceremonies for their dead relatives. This article argues that Igbo funerals crystallize many of the structural paradoxes associated with inequality in Nigerian society, particularly as they are manifest in kin-based patron–client relations between rural communities and their migrant kin. The tensions that coalesce around burials illustrate how rituals are not only socially integrative but also can reflect, reveal, and contribute to discontents regarding transformations in the organization and extent of social inequality.     

Why do good hunters have higher reproductive success?

Anecdotal evidence from many hunter-gatherer societies suggests that successful hunters experience higher prestige and greater reproductive success. Detailed quantitative data on these patterns are now available for five widely dispersed cases (Ache, Hadza, !Kung, Lamalera, and Meriam) and indicate that better hunters exhibit higher age-corrected reproductive success than other men in their social group. Leading explanations to account for this pattern are: (1) direct provisioning of hunters’ wives and offspring, (2) dyadic reciprocity, (3) indirect reciprocity, (4) costly signaling, and (5) phenotypic correlation. I examine the qualitative and quantitative evidence bearing on these explanations and conclude that although none can be definitively rejected, extensive and apparently unconditional sharing of large game somewhat weakens the first three explanations. The costly signaling explanation has support in some cases, although the exact nature of the benefits gained from mating or allying with or deferring to better hunters needs further study. For comments on earlier drafts, I thank Monique Borgerhoff Mulder, Mike Gurven, Ray Hames, Kristen Hawkes, Kim Hill, Robert Kelly, Frank Marlowe, John Patton, and Polly Wiessner. Rebecca Bliege Bird and Douglas W. Bird invited me to collaborate in the Meriam research and (along with Del Passi of Mer) collected the data on Meriam demography. Geoff Kushnick and Matt Wimmer ably assisted with coding and statistical analysis of these data. Eric Alden Smith (PhD 1980, Cornell University) is a professor of anthropology at the University of Washington, Seattle. His research interests include the links between production and reproduction, the ecology and evolution of collective action, and politics in small-scale societies. He has conducted fieldwork among Inuit on Hudson Bay, Meriam in Torres Strait, and Mardu Aborigines in the Australian Western Desert.     

The Chimpanzee''s service economy: Food for grooming

Evidence is presented that the reciprocal exchange of social services among chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) rests on cognitive abilities that allow current behavior to be contingent upon a history of interaction. Food sharing within a captive colony of chimpanzees was studied by means of 200 food trials, conducted on separate daus over a 3-year period, in which 6,972 approaches occurred among the nine adults in the colony. The success rate of each adult, A, to obtain food from another adult, B, was compared with grooming interactions between A and B in the 2 hours prior to each food trial. The tendency of B to share with A was higher if A had groomed B than if A had not done so. The exchange was partner-specific, i.e., the effect of previous grooming on the behavior of food possessors was limited to the grooming partner. Grooming did not affect subsequent sharing by the groomer, only by the groomee. The effect of grooming was greatest for pairs of adults who rarely groomed. Nevertheless, the effect was general: 31 dyadic directions showed an increase in sharing following grooming, and only 11 a decrease. Food possessors actively resisted approaches by individuals who had not groomed them. After food trials there was a significant reduction of grooming by previous possessors towards those individuals with whom they had shared.     

Reservation food sharing among the Ache of Paraguay

We describe food transfer patterns among Ache Indians living on a permanent reservation. The social atmosphere at the reservation is characterized by a larger group size, a more predictable diet, and more privacy than the Ache typically experience in the forest while on temporary foraging treks. Although sharing patterns vary by resource type and package size, much of the food available at the reservation is given to members of just a few other families. We find significant positive correlations between amounts transferred among pairs of families, a measure of the "contingency" component required of reciprocal altruism models. These preferred sharing partners are usually close kin. We explore implications of these results in light of predictions from current sharing models. This research was supported by an L.S.B. Leakey Foundation grant and an NSF Graduate Fellowship to M. Gurven, and NSF Grant #9617692 to K. Hill and A. M. Hurtado. Michael Gurven recently obtained his Ph.D. from the University of New Mexico and is now an assistant professor at UC-Santa Barbara. His current interests include exploring ways in which socioecology influences variation in cooperation within and across human groups, and how cultural norms of fairness co-evolve with systems of resource production and distribution. Wesley Allen-Arave is pursuing his Ph.D. in anthropology at the University of New Mexico. His primary research interests focus on exploring variations across time and space in nonreciprocated altruistic acts, cooperation within social networks, and concerns over social approval. Kim Hill is a professor of anthropology in the Human Evolutionary Ecology (HEE) program at the University of New Mexico. His primary research interests include hunter-gatherer behavioral ecology, life history theory, food acquisition strategies, food sharing, cooperation, and biodiversity conservation in lowland South America. He has done fieldwork with Nahautl, Ache, Guarani, Hiwi, Mashco Piro, Matsiguenga, and Yora indigenous peoples of Central and South America. A. Magdalena Hurtado is associate professor of anthropology at the University of New Mexico. Her research interests include the evolution of cooperation between the sexes, infectious disease and immune system adaptations, the epidemiology of hunter-gatherer societies in transition, and the effects of health on economic productivity. During the past 20 years she has conducted fieldwork among several South American native populations but now works primarily among the Ache of eastern Paraguay.