Foundations of Human Sociality

Abstract This book is the result of a collaborative effort by eleven anthropologists and six economists, and questions the motives that underlie the ways that humans interact socially, and whether these are the same for all societies, and are part of our nature, or are influenced by our environments. Over the past decade, research in experimental economics has emphatically falsified the textbook representation of Homo economicus, with hundreds of experiments that have suggested that people care not only about their own material payoffs but also about such things as fairness, equity, and reciprocity. However, this research has left fundamental questions unanswered: are such social preferences stable components…