Joe Henrich

In revising economic theory, researchers have generally assumed, often implicitly, that all
humans deploy similar, pan-human cognitive machinery for making economic decisions.
This paper, however, reports results from an experimental economics game (the
Ultimatum Game) performed in the Peruvian Amazon which substantially deviate from the
robust results found elsewhere in the world. These data strongly suggest that cultural
differences (socially transmitted behavioral rules) may fundamentally affect basic
economic behavioral patterns.