From the article by Robert Sapolsky (COPYRIGHT 2002 Natural History Magazine, Inc.) -- seems relevant to the Jonathan's Card experiment:
Think about how weird this is. If people were willing to be spontaneously cooperative even if it meant a cost to themselves, this would catapult us into a system of stable cooperation in which everyone profits. Think peace, harmony, Lennon's "Imagine" playing as the credits roll. But people aren't willing to do this. Establish instead a setting in which people can incur costs to themselves by punishing cheaters, in which the punishing doesn't bring them any direct benefit or lead to any direct civic good--and they jump at the chance. And then, indirectly, an atmosphere of stable cooperation just happens to emerge from a rather negative emotion: desire for revenge. And this finding is particularly interesting, given how many of our societal unpleasantries--perpetrated by the jerk who cuts you off in traffic on the crowded freeway, the geek who concocts the next fifteen-minutes-of-fame computer virus--are one-shot, perfect-stranger interactions.
Think about how weird this is. If people were willing to be spontaneously cooperative even if it meant a cost to themselves, this would catapult us into a system of stable cooperation in which everyone profits. Think peace, harmony, Lennon's "Imagine" playing as the credits roll. But people aren't willing to do this. Establish instead a setting in which people can incur costs to themselves by punishing cheaters, in which the punishing doesn't bring them any direct benefit or lead to any direct civic good--and they jump at the chance. And then, indirectly, an atmosphere of stable cooperation just happens to emerge from a rather negative emotion: desire for revenge. And this finding is particularly interesting, given how many of our societal unpleasantries--perpetrated by the jerk who cuts you off in traffic on the crowded freeway, the geek who concocts the next fifteen-minutes-of-fame computer virus--are one-shot, perfect-stranger interactions.