Recasting an economic game as mutual hospitality drops offers to locally appropriate sharing norms.
Evidence
Lesorogol (2007), for example, ran an experiment on gift giving among the Samburu of Kenya. She compared a standard dictator game with a condition where the players were asked to imagine that the money given to Player 1 represented a goat being slaughtered at home and that Player 2 arrived on the scene just when the meat was being divided. In the standard condition, the mean offer was 41.3% of the stake (identical to a mean of 40% in a standard dictator game played in a different Samburu community; Lesorogol 2007). By contrast, the mean offer in the hospitality condition was 19.3%. Informal discussions and interviews in the weeks following the games revealed that in a number of real-world sharing contexts a share of 20% would be appropriate (Lesorogol 2007). For instance, women often share sugar with friends and neighbors who request it. When asked how much sugar they would give to friends if they had a kilogram of sugar, most women responded that they would give a “glass” of sugar, about 200 grams. — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality, 161
Categorization
- CANDY: The 20%-of-a-kilo ‘glass of sugar’ sharing norm is a vivid, self-contained anecdote about how actual reciprocity tracks real-world hospitality rather than equal split.
- XREF: Directly extends the Baumard et al. partner-choice framework the reader is applying — the game becomes legible as hospitality signaling rather than abstract fairness. — connects to: Earned entitlements and game framing change how much people share. — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality: The…, 127; A people’s real-life sharing customs predict their game behavior. — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality: The…, 135; Game offers track whether people see money as shared or personal. — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality: The…, 136
Related
- A people’s real-life sharing customs predict their game behavior. (similarity 0.87)
- Game offers track whether people see money as shared or personal. (similarity 0.84)
- Fairness in economic games tracks perceived entitlement rather than raw contribution. (similarity 0.83)
- Earned entitlements reshape perceived fairness in resource division. (similarity 0.80)
- Earned entitlements and game framing change how much people share. (similarity 0.79)
- Stranger-based game experiments miss most real moral contexts. (similarity 0.79)
Broader Connections
- A people’s real-life sharing customs predict their game behavior.
#corroborates(0.85) — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality, 135 - Game offers track whether people see money as shared or personal.
#expands(0.80) — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality, 136 - Earned entitlements and game framing change how much people share.
#expands(0.75) — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality, 127