The researchers made the people from this area play different economic games and find out that people with a state are less cooperative than stateless people.
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In the new dog-eat-dog society there are no rules. Everyone fights for himself and there’s no shame in behaving in an anti-social way.
Did they control for the size of the village? I’d have thought a smaller village is naturally going to be more cooperative, since they’re ingrained with social norms that lean on the fact that everyone knows everyone. E.g. if you screw someone over, then you can’t “escape” that reputational damage by moving to a different group of friends—everyone knows what you did. As societies get bigger they can’t lean on those benefits of culture as much, so they need to move to a “trustless” model—i.e. lots of laws, formal procedures, etc.
Did they control for the size of the village? I’d have thought a smaller village is naturally going to be more cooperative, since they’re ingrained with social norms that lean on the fact that everyone knows everyone. E.g. if you screw someone over, then you can’t “escape” that reputational damage by moving to a different group of friends—everyone knows what you did. As societies get bigger they can’t lean on those benefits of culture as much, so they need to move to a “trustless” model—i.e. lots of laws, formal procedures, etc.
IIRC, the study was done on people living in a nearby big city, but originally coming from the respective region.