2022年考博英语阅读篇章材料(30)

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　　Fair punishment supports human altruism

　　The idea of fair punishment helps to maintain altruism in human groups, new

　　experiments have shown. People playing an investing game with real money rapidly

　　abandoned their altruistic behaviour if they felt the punishment given for

　　selfish acts was unwarranted.

　　Human altruism intrigues researchers because evolutionary theory predicts

　　that we should only be kind to others if there is something in it for us. But

　　people frequently help out strangers even if they do not expect to meet them

　　again, e.g. tipping waiters or giving to charity.

　　This unqualified generosity shows through the experiments of Ernst Fehr at

　　the University of Zurich, Switzerland, and Bettina Rockenbach at the University

　　of Erfurt in Germany.

　　But the important role of fair punishment was a surprise. It may be that

　　groups of our ancestors who found the best strategies to promote altruism

　　prospered, and bequeathed their behaviours to us.

　　Rate of return

　　The investing games were run anonymously between pairs of students. The

　　"investor" can invest up to 10 monetary units (one MU equals 0.26 Euro) with a

　　"trustee", and requests a specific rate of return. The trustee receives triple

　　the investment put in by the investor and then can choose how much, if any, to

　　return.

　　Even though anonymous trustees could have just kept the investment without

　　being identified, 19 out of 24 of them returned some money. And the more money

　　invested - implying faith in the trustee by the investor - the more they

　　returned. Next, the researchers gave the investors the option of setting a

　　punishment for the trustee in advance, if they did not return the amount asked

　　for. A fine of four MUs would be deducted from the trustee's earnings if they

　　paid back too little.

　　Choosing not to impose any punishment clearly went down well with the

　　trustees - they gave back 50 per cent more money on average. "They feel an

　　obligation to pay back, because they have been treated nicely by the investor,"

　　says Fehr.

　　Getting greedy

　　Women attracted to altruistic men, but not vice versa

　　But, crucially, trustees make a distinction between fair and unfair

　　punishments. When the requested return is low, meaning the trustee will make

　　more than the investor, then imposing a fine did not significantly change the

　　payback given.

　　However, if the investor is more greedy and asks for a large return that

　　leaves the trustee worse off, then an additional threat of punishment makes

　　trustees slash their payouts by nearly two thirds.

　　"If people feel the punishment is fair, they respond by cooperating," says

　　Herbert Gintis, an economist and expert in human altruism at the University of

　　Massachusetts in Amherst, but they react very badly to an unfair punishment.

　　Journal reference: Nature (vol 422, p 137)

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