Estimated Costs and Benefits of Extreme Rituals in Mauritius
Why do people willingly engage in painful or exhausting rituals with no obvious material reward?
New paper on the role of costly signals during intergroup conflict
In a series of experimental studies M. Lang with R. Chvaja and B. G. Purzycki demonstrated that costly signals assort more cooperative participants who create ultra-cooperative, successful groups.
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How do individuals seek reliable partners in intergroup conflicts? The authors simulated intergroup conflict using economic games with US participants in four consecutive studies to examine the role of costly commitment signals in the choice of partners during group formation for the purpose of intergorup competiiton. The results showed that only extreme cooperators used very costly signals and created ultra-cooperative groups, willing to harm other groups to benefit their own.
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