Authors
Helen Bernhard, Urs Fischbacher, and Ernst Fehr
Summary
In the experiment there are three players A, B, and C. Player A gets an initial endowment of 10, player B gets 0 and player C gets 5 points. First, player A decides how many of his 10 points to transfer to B. Then, player C observes the decisions of A and gets the possibility to leave the payoffs unaffected or to punish A by deducting 3 (or 6) points from A at a cost of 1 point (or 2 points) for C. If an egalitarian fairness norm applies, player A should transfer a fair amount of 5 points to B; and C should punish A if A violates the norm by transferring less than 5 points.
We conducted the third party punishment game with members of two small, distinct, cohesive, and non-hostile indigenous tribes in the Western Highlands of Papua New Guinea (PNG). As we wanted to examine the parochial behavioral patterns, we allocated each subject in our study to one of the following four treatment conditions. (i) All three players in the game are from the same tribe (treatment ABC). (ii) Only player A and B are from the same tribe while C is an outgroup member (AB). (iii) Only player B and C are from the same tribe (BC). (iv) Only Player A and C are from the same tribe (AC). Treatment (iii) and (iv) are novel as previous studies with university students had only considered the ABC and the AB condition. The decision-makers in all four treatments were informed about the other two players’ group affiliation.
A total of 195 members – aged 17 to 60 – of two small scale societies in the Western Highlands of Papua New Guinea – the Wolimbka and the Ngenika – participated in the third party punishment game, permitting us to conduct 65 games with three players each. We recruited 216 subjects but later had to dismiss 21 subjects because they did not understand the payoff consequences of different action combinations. We, therefore, conducted 17 games in the AB treatment and 16 in each of the other treatments.
The clans live in areas roughly 30 kilometers from one another. The members of the clans do not live in big villages, but are grouped in hamlets averaging two to six huts. Located in the Wahgi Valley, the Wolimbka dwellings are scattered among gardens over rough and bushy terrain, whilst the Ngenikas, living in the Mondomil Valley, are spread around dense rainforest. Both clans speak “Wahgi”, with dialectal differences between the two areas. The members of both clans are also conversant in Neo-Melanesian (Pidgin).
Each of these societies consists of 400-600 people. Their subsistence is based on horticulture and pig husbandry, supplemented by hunting and gathering. Gardening is the main subsistence activity, but hunting provides a welcome addition to their diet. Sweet potatoes are the main food in both tribal societies. Most families raise a few pigs, which are an integral part of the gifts presented in the exchanges and ceremonies recurrent in village life (e.g. bride price, compensation fee).
Some of the surplus from the subsistence sector is sold on markets. Small outdoor markets are found everywhere along the roads, where women and children sell their garden produce, and other commodities such as string bags, betel nuts, and limes. As is the case in most Highland communities, coffee is one of the main agriculture products and is a prime income earner for the villagers. It is one of the few commercial crops which the villagers can grow and sell without the need for processing.
Tribal warfare is a frequent event in PNG. Both clans have had many recent wars with their neighbouring tribes. One important reason for choosing the Ngenikas and the Wolimkas as subjects in our experiment is that these two clans have never conducted tribal warfare with each other within the memorized history of the elders of the two clans. They are neutral towards each other and do not exchange any gifts or goods, except in the rare case of inter-clan marriage. Thus, due to the absence of any hostilities between the two clans, finding parochialism across these two tribes makes our results even stronger.
Further details
The protocol was published on Protocol Exchange in 2006. To see the entire protocol, click on the source link.
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