Performances at the Ultimatum and Dictator Games: evidence for the declining of cooperation in our social life

Cooperation is the cornerstone of social life. Lack of cooperation would lead to a wide range of social, moral, cultural and economic disasters. Altruistic punishment is found to be the major strategy to maintain and to encourage people to adhere to cooperation. The aim of the present study was to separate altruistic punishment from other seemingly similar forms of behavior. For the purpose of study, 60 male students of Shahid Beheshti University participated, were recruited. Their performance at both Dictator Game (DG) and Ultimatum Game (UG) where assessed in a computerized setting. Generally, %75 of participants rejected unfair offers in UG; whilst the same number of participants behaved unfairly in DG. Only, %25 of participants rejected unfair offers in the UG and acted fairly in the DG, which is considered an altruistic punishment. About %50 of participants rejected unfair offers in the UG, but they acted unfairly in the DG. This pattern of behavior is defined as spiteful punishment, which is a form of antisocial punishment. Eventually, %25 of participants accepted the unfair offers in the UG and behaved unfairly in the DG. This behavior pattern shows individual profit seeking at the cost of accepting injustice. A pattern that has not been reported in other studies so far. Although rejecting any unfair offer in the UG cannot be interpreted as altruistic punishment. However, the low rate of this behavior pattern in contrast to the high rate of spiteful punishment predicts a growing lack of social cooperation because the minority of people who behave cooperatively, gradually learn that cooperation is not beneficial. Instead, those who behave selfishly, monopolistically and profit-seeking, get a lot of advantages. In this way, individual profit-seeking surpasses cooperation and becomes the dominant paradigm. This situation is the bane of social life.