While I find much of the post not good evidence of a large share of adult people being mean, I did experience multiple times adults being arbitrarily mean in situations with no apparent reason at all—while I believe most people are innately somewhat good, I agree there is a significant share of them being evil to random strangers for really no apparent reason at all.
Different point, probably not the most crucial point here but: In these prisoners-dilemma/public-good behavioral games, I always wonder whether the results are affected by the fact that participants might, half-consciously or consciously, understand that it’s zero-sum: no real economic value gets lost. It’s merely a transfer between the leader of the experiment and the participants. No social value gets destroyed from defecting, only money gets transferred between different agents in response to my behavior in the game.
While I find much of the post not good evidence of a large share of adult people being mean, I did experience multiple times adults being arbitrarily mean in situations with no apparent reason at all—while I believe most people are innately somewhat good, I agree there is a significant share of them being evil to random strangers for really no apparent reason at all.
Different point, probably not the most crucial point here but: In these prisoners-dilemma/public-good behavioral games, I always wonder whether the results are affected by the fact that participants might, half-consciously or consciously, understand that it’s zero-sum: no real economic value gets lost. It’s merely a transfer between the leader of the experiment and the participants. No social value gets destroyed from defecting, only money gets transferred between different agents in response to my behavior in the game.