''Homo reciprocans'', or reciprocating human, is the concept in some

economic theories Economics () is a behavioral science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. Microeconomics analys ...

of humans as cooperative actors who are motivated by improving their environment through positive reciprocity (rewarding other individuals) or negative reciprocity (punishing other individuals), even in situations without foreseeable benefit for themselves. This concept stands in contrast to the idea of ''

homo economicus The term ''Homo economicus'', or economic man, is the portrayal of humans as agents who are consistently rational and narrowly self-interested, and who pursue their subjectively defined ends optimally. It is a wordplay on ''Homo sapiens'', u ...

'', which states the opposite theory that human beings are exclusively motivated by self-interest. However, the two ideas can be reconciled if we assume that utility functions of the ''homo economicus'' can have parameters that are dependent to the perceived utility of other agents (such as one's spouse or children).

Kropotkin

Russian theorist

Peter Kropotkin Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin (9 December 1842 – 8 February 1921) was a Russian anarchist and geographer known as a proponent of anarchist communism. Born into an aristocratic land-owning family, Kropotkin attended the Page Corps and later s ...

wrote about the concept of "mutual aid" in the early part of the 20th century.

Examples

The ''Homo reciprocans'' concept states that human being players interact with a propensity to cooperate. They will compromise in order to achieve a balance between what is best for them and what is best for the environment they are a part of. ''Homo reciprocans'' players, however, also are motivated by justification. If a second player is perceived as having done something wrong or insulting, the first player is willing to "take a hit", even with no foreseeable benefits, in order for the second player to suffer. A common example of this interaction is the haggler and shopkeeper. If the haggler wants a deal and the shopkeeper wants a sale, the haggler must carefully choose a price for the shopkeeper to consider. The shopkeeper will consider a lower price (or a price in between) based on the benefit of selling a product. If the haggler's offer is a low-ball, which may be offensive to the shopkeeper, the shopkeeper may refuse simply on the grounds that he is offended, and will knowingly and purposely lose the sale.

Positive and negative reciprocity

Reciprocal players are willing to reward behaviour that is just or fair, and to punish unjust or unfair behaviour. Empirical evidence suggests that positive and negative reciprocity are fundamentally different behavioral dispositions in the sense that the values for positive and negative reciprocity in individuals are only weakly correlated and that these values correlate differently with factors such as gender or age.Thomas Dohmen, Armin Falk, David Huffmann, Uwe Sunde
''Homo reciprocans: survey evidence on prevalence, behaviour and success''
IZA Discussion Paper no. 2205, July 2006 A possible explanation is "that negative and positive reciprocity are different because they tap into different emotional responses". Positive reciprocity correlates with height, with increasing age, with female gender, with higher income as well as higher number of hours of work, with a higher number of friends and with higher overall

life satisfaction Life satisfaction is an evaluation of a person's quality of life. It is assessed in terms of mood, relationship satisfaction, achieved goals, self-concepts, and the self-perceived ability to cope with life. Life satisfaction involves a favorabl ...

. Evidence indicates that "married individuals are more positively reciprocal, but are not different from the unmarried in terms of negative reciprocity". Among employees, negative reciprocity appear to be correlated with a higher number of sick days. Positive reciprocity correlates with low unemployment, and negative reciprocity strongly correlates with unemployment. High levels of positive reciprocity correlate with higher income, but no correlation appears to exist between negative reciprocity and income.

Determining Propensity to Reciprocate of Homo Reciprocans

Sex, Age, and Height

A study conducted by Thomas Dohmen and his team of behavioral economists investigated the determinants of trust and reciprocity, in which their results indicated that women hold a higher propensity to trust and, thus reciprocate, than men. This finding is echoed by Warneken and Tomasello’s study on reciprocity in children, through which they found that girls are more prosocial than boys. Thomas Dohmen and his team of behavioral economists also found a positive correlation between both age and height and one’s trust, meaning that the taller a person is, the more willing they are to trust, and the same idea applies to age—the older one gets, the more trusting they are. Ernst Fehr and Simon Gächter, professors of behavioral economics at the University of Zurich, discovered through their study that women and the elderly are more apt to perform reciprocal behaviors.

Personality

Dohmen’s study on the Big 5 personality types as determinants of trust and reciprocity concluded that all personality types impact one’s propensity to reciprocate positively. On the other hand, in regards to negative reciprocity, they found that extraversion and openness have little to no effect, but people who land on the higher end of the neuroticism spectrum tend to be more negatively reciprocal, while those who are more conscientious and agreeable tend to be less so.

Culture

Cultural psychologists Joan Miller and David Bersoff, in an experimental study in 1994, found that Americans receive greater utility in providing help under a reciprocity condition than without one; on the other hand, Indians displayed virtually no difference in utility with or without a prior reciprocal occasion. In a similar study conducted by Miller and seven other psychologists, they found that Indians base their reciprocal acts on communal norms while Americans’ are contingent on reciprocal exchanges. An example of such difference is that Indians act upon their peers’ requests for assistance repeatedly throughout their lifetimes, whereas Americans show reciprocal behaviors shortly, and only, after altruistic acts were performed towards them.

Perceived Motives

Yesim Orhun, a professor of marketing at the University of Michigan Ross School Business, emphasizes the significance of people’s perceived dispositions in reciprocal situations in her research on perceived motives and reciprocity. She asserts that generosity becomes polluted if the impression of an expected return of favor is given during an act of kindness. However, she also notes that perceived kindness is only a factor in positive reciprocity because the intentions of a person who commits harmful acts are apparent, but those of a person who performs beneficial acts are ambiguous, unsure of intentions behind.

References

External links

Rational self interest
Roger A. McCain,

Drexel University Drexel University is a private university, private research university with its main campus in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Drexel's undergraduate school was founded in 1891 by Anthony Joseph Drexel, Anthony J. Drexel, a financier ...

Self-Interest, Homo Islamicus and Some Behavioral Assumptions in Islamic Economics and Finance
(DOC) by Mohammad Omar Farooq
Reciprocans
a blog by current economics PhD student at the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

Dan Gibbons

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(Melbourne), MSc (Queensland) and Tasman Bain of the

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with the patronage of former

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

Professor

Peter Corning Peter Andrew Corning (born 1935) is an American biologist, consultant, and complex systems scientist, Director of the Institute for the Study of Complex Systems, in Seattle, Washington. He is known especially for his work on the causal role of ...

Requiem for Homo Economicus
Edward J. O'Boyle, Mayo Research Institute, a refutation of reductionism in

free will Free will is generally understood as the capacity or ability of people to (a) choice, choose between different possible courses of Action (philosophy), action, (b) exercise control over their actions in a way that is necessary for moral respon ...

using tenets of

natural law Natural law (, ) is a Philosophy, philosophical and legal theory that posits the existence of a set of inherent laws derived from nature and universal moral principles, which are discoverable through reason. In ethics, natural law theory asserts ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Homo Reciprocans Economic methodology Latin philosophical phrases Moral psychology Rational choice theory