M.M. I guess you have tried to compare this information with colleagues
in other fields like psychology, sociology, etc. Why is money able to change
the way we behave?
G.C.
Well, so far we have
some hypotheses that
have to be tested, of
course, in order to give
at least an initial intuition, an initial answer,
but it’s not proof from
an experiment, it provides an intuition, and
it has to be replicated many times to have
some sort of more scientific validity, but the
idea is this: consider
the many differences
among the individuals in a large group of
people, individuals that
do not know exactly
each other’s behavior,
they may not help each
other, as it is in modern
societies, large societies. In these types of
societies, if you want to
create norms of mutual support, you really
have to rely quite a bit
on the others, but if you
help someone today,
or if you’re given help,
then someone else will
help you in the future,
so there is this give and
take.
that if there is someone who does not help,
as everyone else does,
the entire group has to
punish these individuals. These types of punishment norms are very
Creating these norms
requires that the groups
of people that engage
in such norms of mutual support are able to
punish, or enforce,
deviations from cooperation. The theory is
hard to enforce, and in
particular there must be
some sort of coordination at the group level.
The larger the group,
the harder it is to coordinate on this type of
punishment scheme. So
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