The concern about social image is an essential feature of human psychology



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## The concern about social image is an essential feature of human psychology Getting a good reputation greatly promotes people’s cooperation, according to a research developed by the Universitat Jaume I

08/09/2016 |
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* [![ imatgesocialnature UJI_grimalda_01](/com/investigacio/arxiu/noticies/2016/9/imatgesocialnature/UJI_grimalda_01.JPG)](#)

Building a social image of prestige is an essential feature of human psychology; in fact, it promotes people’s cooperation more efficiently than other motivations. The findings of this study developed within a community in Papua New Guinea, which has been led by lecturer Gianluca Grimalda from the Universitat Jaume I, have been published in *Nature Communications*.

“Our concern about how others see us is not limited to the interaction in social networks or feedback on e-Bay: it comes previously to new technologies because it is intrinsic to our psychology”, states Grimalda, who carried out a stay in the Teop community of Papua New Guinea to test his theories on human cooperation. This community in Oceania was selected both for its small size and low levels of social complexity, and for showing characteristics that are very different to Western societies. UJI’s lecturer carried out this stay together with researchers Andreas Pondorfer, his teammate at the Institute for World Economics of the University of Kiel, where he is developing a stay, and David P. Tracer, from the University of Colorado in Denver, USA.

The Teop people are horticulturalists and foragers. They use rudimentary tools to grow their food, they have no mechanized industry, and payment for labour is rare. They live in villages of approximately 150 people. «This type of small-scale society is ideal for testing evolutionary theories of human behaviour as the conditions within them are much closer to those experienced throughout most of our evolutionary history—unlike Western industrialized societies. The Teop field study is one of the first to examine the effects of real-life social image on human cooperation», underlined the lecturer.

According to evolutionary and economic theories, humans, like other animals, are expected to behave selfishly, maximizing material gains for themselves. Since cooperation involves sacrificing self-interest for the interests of the group, cooperation should have been wiped out by natural selection. Yet human cooperation still occurs in all known societies. This is a scientific puzzle that demands explanation. Several theories have been proposed to explain the evolution of cooperation. In the Teop field study, the researchers focused on two of the most common ones: social image concerns and the propensity to punish deviant behaviour. The former theory describes the desire of the individual to maintain his or her reputation as a cooperator in the social group. The latter emphasizes the capacity of human groups to “self-enforce” cooperation norms, with some individuals acting as “vigilantes,” who are prepared to sacrifice their own resources to punish those who do not cooperate.

The relevance of social image concerns was tested among the Teop people through the presence in some sessions—but not in others—of a “Big Man” (community leader) as an observer of participants’ decisions in anonymous cooperative interactions, the so-called Prisoner’s Dilemma game. In the absence of effective formal institutions, the Big Men are responsible for solving social disputes and enforcing social norms. They also serve as the “hubs” of social networks and are the figures toward whom individuals in the community strive to maintain a positive social image.

**AN EFFICIENT COOPERATION**

The key finding of the study is that social image concerns far outweigh punishment as factors that promote the efficiency of cooperation in this society. Interestingly, when a Big Man from an external group acts as the observer, there is no positive influence on cooperation. Social image concerns therefore appear limited to the individual’s own social group. Overall, from the point of view of Grimalda, «these results support the view that a concern for one’s social image is a universal trait in human psychology. Conversely, the propensity to punish non-cooperative behaviour, which is observable in some contemporary societies, is likely to have been acquired relatively recently in human evolution». The study concludes that the desire among individuals to maintain a positive social image within the community is more important than punishment as a driver of social cooperation.

Gianluca Grimalda stresses that the most surprising result of his work is "without a doubt, that punishment by the other ‘player’ or by an ‘observer’ that works like a judge, has not brought benefits. On the contrary, it has destroyed many resources that participants could have won. And it is because in many societies, especially in the Protestant religious tradition, this mechanism acts in a outstanding way to increase the benefits of cooperation”, he adds.

In this society of Papua, likewise in other societies from Russia, Greece or Turkey, very high levels of punishment are observed in general –much higher than in the replication studies carried out in Germany– and also very high levels of the so-called “anti-social punishment”, i.e., the punishment of those who cooperate. In Grimalda’s opinion, "the reasons for such anti-social punishment have not still been understood. With much surprise, we noticed that the observers/judges also punish cooperators massively. We think these societies are very competitive and are based on a type of logic as *mors tua, vita mea* (your death is my life). In other words, my personal position improves if yours gets worse. But this translates into a true collective disaster”.

**QUESTIONS ON PUNISHMENT**

From these results, the research group is working on a new study that delves precisely in the motivations behind punishment in both situations of interaction. That is, the punishment by another participant in the game of cooperation and punishment by the observer/judge. "We have plans to return to Bougainville (Papua) next year to address what is one of the most interesting –and yet unsolved– research questions concerning cooperation: why does punishment work well in some societies and not in others? Is there a relationship between the capacity of social image and punishment, respectively, to increase the benefits of cooperation?”, the researcher adds.

Gianluca Grimalda is lecturer of Fundamentals of Economic Analysis at the Department of Economics in the Universitat Jaume I since 2012. He is currently developing a research stay at the Institute for World Economics from the University of Kiel (Germany) and has also collaborated with the Centre for the Study of Global Cooperation at the University of Duisburg-Essen (Germany). His main research field focuses on the foundations of cooperative behaviour. For that reason, he uses an experimental methodology and prioritizes a comparative analysis of different cultures. In his career, he has directed several research projects funded, among others, by the US National Science Foundation, the European Commission and the Spanish Ministry of Education. His work has an interdisciplinary profile, and he has published articles in *Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences*, *Psychological Science* and *Experimental Economics*.

Grimalda, G. et al. “Social image concerns promote cooperation more than altruistic punishment”. *Nature Communications*, 7:12288, doi: 10.1038/ncomms12288 (2016).

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