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No.07
So this triptych, these three panels portray the timeless truth that order tends to decay. The truth of social entropy. But lest you think this is just some part of the Christian imagination where Christians have this weird problem with pleasure, here’s the same story, the same progression, told in a paper that was published in Nature a few years ago, in which Ernst Fehr and Simon Gachter had people play a commons dilemma. A game in which you give people money, and then, on each round of the game, they can put money into a common pot, and then the experimenter doubles what’s in there, and then it’s all divided among the players. So it’s a really nice analog for all sorts of environmental issues, where we’re asking people to make a sacrifice and they themselves don’t really benefit from their own sacrifice. But you really want everybody else to sacrifice, but everybody has a temptation to a free ride. And what happens is that, at first, people start off reasonably cooperative — and this is all played anonymously. On the first round, people give about half of the money that they can. But they quickly see, “You know what, other people aren’t doing so much though. I don’t want to be a sucker. I’m not going to cooperate.” And so cooperation quickly decays from reasonably good, down to close to zero.
But then — and here’s the trick — Fehr and Gachter said, on the seventh round, they told people, “You know what? New rule. If you want to give some of your own money to punish people who aren’t contributing, you can do that.” And as soon as people heard about the punishment issue going on, cooperation shoots up. It shoots up and it keeps going up. There’s a lot of research showing that to solve cooperative problems, it really helps. It’s not enough to just appeal to people’s good motives. It really helps to have some sort of punishment. Even if it’s just shame or embarrassment or gossip, you need some sort of punishment to bring people, when they’re in large groups, to cooperate. There’s even some recent research suggesting that religion — priming God, making people think about God — often, in some situations, leads to more cooperative, more prosocial behavior.
ボキャブラリー
So this triptych, these three panels portray the timeless truth that order tends to decay. The truth of social entropy. But lest you think this is just some part of the Christian imagination where Christians have this weird problem with pleasure, here’s the same story, the same progression, told in a paper that was published in Nature a few years ago, in which Ernst Fehr and Simon Gachter had people play a commons dilemma. A game in which you give people money, and then, on each round of the game, they can put money into a common pot, and then the experimenter doubles what’s in there, and then it’s all divided among the players. So it’s a really nice analog for all sorts of environmental issues, where we’re asking people to make a sacrifice and they themselves don’t really benefit from their own sacrifice. But you really want everybody else to sacrifice, but everybody has a temptation to a free ride. And what happens is that, at first, people start off reasonably cooperative — and this is all played anonymously. On the first round, people give about half of the money that they can. But they quickly see, “You know what, other people aren’t doing so much though. I don’t want to be a sucker. I’m not going to cooperate.” And so cooperation quickly decays from reasonably good, down to close to zero.
But then — and here’s the trick — Fehr and Gachter said, on the seventh round, they told people, “You know what? New rule. If you want to give some of your own money to punish people who aren’t contributing, you can do that.” And as soon as people heard about the punishment issue going on, cooperation shoots up. It shoots up and it keeps going up. There’s a lot of research showing that to solve cooperative problems, it really helps. It’s not enough to just appeal to people’s good motives. It really helps to have some sort of punishment. Even if it’s just shame or embarrassment or gossip, you need some sort of punishment to bring people, when they’re in large groups, to cooperate. There’s even some recent research suggesting that religion — priming God, making people think about God — often, in some situations, leads to more cooperative, more prosocial behavior.
portray: vt.
timeless: a. 永久の、永遠の
order: n. 秩序、自然の理法、道理；健康な状態、常態
decay: vi. 腐敗する、腐る、悪化する、衰える、崩壊する
entropy: n. 拡散化、一様化、無秩序化、衰退、エントロピー
lest: conj. 〜しないように、〜するといけないから
weird: a. 奇妙な、風変わりな、変な、変わった
progression: n. 進歩、進展、発展、進行、前進
Ernst Fehr: アーンスト・フェール（オーストリアの経済学者。チューリヒ大学教授）
Simon Gachter: サイモン・ゲイシュター（オーストリアの経済学者。ノッティンガム大学教授）
dilemma: n. ジレンマ、板挟み、難問、窮地、困難
round: n. ラウンド、一試合、一勝負
pot: n. ポット、つぼ、かめ、鍋
experimenter: n. 実験者
double: vt. 〜を倍にする
divide: vt. 〜を分ける、分割する、分け合う、分担する
analog: n. 類似物、類似体、類似環境、相似器官
sacrifice: n. 犠牲、いけにえ
make a sacrifice: 犠牲にする
free ride: 無料乗車、ただ乗り
start off: 始める、動き出す、着手する
reasonably: adv. 合理的に、道理にかなって、まずまず、かなり
cooperative: a. 協力的な、助け合う、共同して働く
anonymously: adv. 匿名で
sucker: n. カモ、だまされやすい人、言いなりになる人
trick: n. たくらみ、策略、計略；こつ、うまいやり方、秘訣
punish: vt. 〜を罰する、懲らしめる、罰則を科す
punishment: n. 罰、刑罰、処罰、懲罰
shoot up: 急上昇する、急に成長する、急騰する
appeal to: 〜に訴える、〜の心に訴える、〜に懇願する
motive: n. 動機、真意、誘引、理由
shame: n. 恥、恥ずかしさ、不名誉、羞恥心
embarrassment: n. 決まり悪さ、困惑、狼狽
gossip: n. うわさ、うわさ話、陰口
prime: vt. 〜を準備する、用意する、呼び水を入れる
lead to ~: 〜に通じる、つながる、至る、結局〜となる、〜を引き起こす、もたらす
prosocial: a. 〈行動が〉積極的な、人の力になる、社会的に受け入れる
解説
アーンスト・フェールとサイモン・ゲイシュターの論文はこちら → “Altruistic punishment in humans”