Z:gnu-www-ja-frank--a23046-For the sake of discussion, su/en

For the sake of discussion, suppose that exposure to the self-interest model does, in fact, cause people to behave more selfishly. Should this be a cause for concern? To the extent that norms favoring cooperation help solve prisoner's dilemmas and other market failures, one cost of a rise in selfish behavior is a fall in the real value of economic output. Who bears this cost? By conventional accounts, it is those who continue to behave cooperatively, a troubling outcome on equity grounds. Several researchers have recently suggested, however, that the ultimate victims of noncooperative behavior may be the very people who practice it. Suppose, for example, that some people always cooperate in one-shot prisoner's dilemmas while others always follow the seemingly dominant strategy of defecting. If people are free to interact with others of their own choosing, and if there are cues that distinguish cooperators from defectors, then cooperators will interact selectively with one another and earn higher payoffs than defectors. Elsewhere we have shown that even on the basis of brief encounters involving strangers, experimental subjects are adept at predicting who will cooperate and who will defect in prisoner's dilemma games. If people are even better at predicting the behavior of people they know well, it seems that the direct pursuit of material self-interest may indeed often be self-defeating.