Cultural impediments to learning to cooperate: An experimental study of high- and low-caste men in rural India.

ABSTRACT: We report experimental findings on how individuals from different cultures solve a repeated coordination game of common interest. The results overturn earlier findings that fixed pairs are almost assured to coordinate on an efficient and cooperative equilibrium. Subjects in the prior experiments were US university students, whereas the subjects in our study are men drawn from high and low castes in rural India. Most low-caste pairs quickly established an efficient and cooperative convention, but most high-caste pairs did not. The largest difference in behavior occurred when a player suffered a loss because he had tried to cooperate but his partner did not: In this situation, high-caste men were far less likely than low-caste men to continue trying to cooperate in the next period. Our inter

SUBMITTER: Brooks BA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6233091 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature