Just to share anecdata - I grew up in Malaysia but am generally based in Australia, and have noticed a vein of this tendency in the Southeast Asian culture (not covered in the study).
It's only a small percentage, but there really is a type for whom public goods are a concept which only have a flimsy existence. Instead they hold the belief that the smartest people are the ones who try to grab the most for themselves, to an insane level. It doesn't really matter how much the damage their lack of cooperation does, and they get a personal satisfaction from "winning" or "being smart". If punished for that behaviour I would expect retaliation - they were just trying to do the smart thing after all!
Some extreme examples - I heard about uni students who upon graduation took out credit cards, bought a bunch of nice things, then moved home for good and skipped out on the bill. And they clearly didn't desperately need the money as they were medium rich overseas students. One guy I knew personally (who was eventually kicked out of our student group) would do stuff like grab giant stacks of napkins from restaurants and take home rolls of TP from public restrooms. So gross!
The people I met who had this tendency all had a poorer or working class family background, but were all middle class or higher now. My theory is this might be something to do with intergenerational experiences in these poorer countries that (1) the commons will definitely not look after you, and (2) if you didn't have enough you and your family might literally starve to death. And so the right thing to do is look after yourself first at all costs. Looking after the public good might feel like a luxury or foolish behaviour under these circumstances.
That kind of behavior is also common in Brazil, and used to be accepted (people would brag about it!), and yes people (sometimes as a team) would try to reciprocate any punishment they get from harming commons.
Then, suddenly something happened and the behaviors stopped being so well accepted. The revenge seeking after the punishment is still there, and the behaviors are still very common. That threw the country completely out of equilibrium.
That's so interesting. When did the change happen? Do you think the recent instability is a result of this? And would you have any theories as to why this nonacceptance suddenly kicked in?
I'm very interested in this topic as after living in both countries, it feels to me like this is one major factor which explains why rich countries are rich and poor countries are poor. Public goods create a ton of wealth. But you can't have them if free-ridership exists past a certain point.
It happened at between 2011 and 2014. It looked like a complete coherent change locally, but slower to move from one place to the other, like in a month you go to the market, people cut the line and others just shrug, then next month you go to the same market, people cut the line and everybody starts to complain immediately.
I imagine it was related to the corruption fighting that was all over the news. It clearly caused some social tension, but I don't believe it's responsible to most of current tension (I think most of the current tension was carefully fabricated by propaganda creators).
Fair point, I'm sure it exists everywhere. Free riding is never going to completely disappear (psychopathy seems to be evolutionarily stable after all). But when you look at the outcomes of the Public Goods with Punishment game in the link, there's definitely more free riding happening in the poorer countries studied. Maybe weak institutions and proximity to starvation result in a greater percentage of this behaviour in the population? The causality is tricky to figure out though.
It's only a small percentage, but there really is a type for whom public goods are a concept which only have a flimsy existence. Instead they hold the belief that the smartest people are the ones who try to grab the most for themselves, to an insane level. It doesn't really matter how much the damage their lack of cooperation does, and they get a personal satisfaction from "winning" or "being smart". If punished for that behaviour I would expect retaliation - they were just trying to do the smart thing after all!
Some extreme examples - I heard about uni students who upon graduation took out credit cards, bought a bunch of nice things, then moved home for good and skipped out on the bill. And they clearly didn't desperately need the money as they were medium rich overseas students. One guy I knew personally (who was eventually kicked out of our student group) would do stuff like grab giant stacks of napkins from restaurants and take home rolls of TP from public restrooms. So gross!
The people I met who had this tendency all had a poorer or working class family background, but were all middle class or higher now. My theory is this might be something to do with intergenerational experiences in these poorer countries that (1) the commons will definitely not look after you, and (2) if you didn't have enough you and your family might literally starve to death. And so the right thing to do is look after yourself first at all costs. Looking after the public good might feel like a luxury or foolish behaviour under these circumstances.