The theory of indirect reciprocity suggests that people who earn a good reputation by helping others are more likely to be rewarded by third parties. Cooperation is essential for societal functioning, and reputations play a crucial role in encouraging individuals to cooperate with each other. However, most theoretical models regarding reputations are binary and based on limited information. In today’s information-rich environment, there is a lot of data available about people’s behaviors, particularly with the prevalence of social media.
Professors Joshua B. Plotkin and Corina Tarnita have been leading teams in collaborative research on cooperation. Doctoral student Sebastián Michel-Mata proposed the idea of examining how to judge someone in an information-rich environment. Current theories suggest that reputations can only work in societies with complex norms of judgment and public institutions. However, Michel-Mata believes that reputations are summaries of multiple actions and not based on a single action.
The research team, through mathematical modeling, introduced the concept of “look twice, forgive once” as a method of judging behavior in a society. This method involves assessing multiple actions and forgiving some bad actions to sustain cooperation. Their findings, published in Nature, provide insights into how individuals can maintain cooperation without the need for gossip or public institutions. This method offers an alternative to promote cooperation when trust in institutions decreases.
In the study, the team used a one-shot donation game to analyze how individuals update their views of each other’s reputations. The idea of indirect reciprocity is that individuals are nice to others based on their reputation with a third party. The researchers found that observing at least one good action from another player led to cooperation, while observing only bad actions resulted in defection. The “look twice, forgive once” strategy could not be displaced by other strategies, indicating its robustness in promoting cooperation.
The authors were surprised that looking more than twice did not yield additional benefits and that information was a double-edged sword. Despite the availability of information, individuals did not evolve to use all of it. The simplicity and robustness of their findings suggest that the behavioral strategy may have existed in human societies for a long time. This research offers potential for anthropologists and behavioral scientists to further explore the implications of these findings in societal interactions.
The collaboration between the Plotkin and Tarnita labs continues as they explore how people interact in different contexts. They are investigating how private misbehavior can impact public reputation, touching on contemporary social issues where personal actions become public knowledge. The team’s research sheds light on the importance of reputation management and forgiveness in sustaining cooperation within societies.