Yongzheng combined benefits to officials with severe punishment. Was his altruism a true sacrifice or a strategic choice? The repetition-reciprocity hypothesis explores the motivation behind it.
Despite his short reign of 13 years, Yongzheng of the Qing Dynasty, considered one of the most reforming monarchs in Chinese history, introduced a system called “yanglian” in 1724. The term means “cultivating integrity,” and local officials were given special allowances to discourage corruption due to economic hardship. This system not only helped to stabilize the livelihoods of officials, but also improved the overall administrative efficiency of the country. During Yongzheng’s reign, corruption among local officials decreased, which in turn improved the quality of life for the people.
However, given that this was a monarchy, it can be assumed that opening up the country and distributing it to his subjects would have been quite costly to the emperor, as it underpinned his power. This kind of behavior is called altruism, which benefits others to the detriment of oneself. It’s a strategy that doesn’t favor survival from a traditional evolutionary biology perspective. If you give to others, you have nothing left for yourself, and you can’t plan for tomorrow. However, many altruistic humans have survived to the present day, raising questions. In order to answer this question, we need to understand why altruistic behavior occurs and what are the strengths that allow it to survive. Various hypotheses have been proposed to explain altruism, including the repetition-reciprocity hypothesis.
As the name suggests, the repetition-reciprocity hypothesis is based on two pillars: repetition and reciprocity. Reciprocity is embodied in the principle of reciprocity, which states that in a relationship with another person, one responds to the other person’s favor with favor and the other responds to the other person’s malice with malice. What stands out here is that it is conditional on the other party’s behavior. My behavior is determined by the behavior of the other party. According to this principle, “I” can help and be helped in a relationship with an altruistic human being who does favors for others. On the other hand, when dealing with selfish humans who have malicious intentions, I can refuse to cooperate and suffer no loss. The strength of reciprocity becomes clear when we extend this relationship to a large number of people living in a group. A person who adopts the principle of reciprocity can form cooperative relationships with many people, giving and receiving help when needed. Those who don’t will be ostracized by others and gradually die out. This is because humans are social animals and cannot live in a society where they have an advantage. In summary, reciprocity is mutually beneficial, and it’s what drives individuals to engage in altruistic behavior. However, the question arises whether reciprocity can always be valid.
Repeatability, the other pillar, provides the conditions for reciprocity to work. If the relationship with the other party is a one-off, then it’s in their best interest to accept help and then avoid it. However, if you are constantly faced with an opponent who has a principle of reciprocity, the one-time benefit of betrayal will be dwarfed by the benefit of repeated cooperation. Furthermore, the opponent may retaliate against your betrayal. If the other party retaliates strongly, the gains you’ve made will be wiped out. If the interaction continues like this, we fear that the other party will retaliate next time, which is an incentive for people to cooperate with the other party. Yongzheng’s altruistic behavior can also be explained by reciprocity and repetition. Yongzheng rewarded officials who maintained their integrity with an extra piece of silver. However, if the officials were not satisfied with the two pieces of silver and committed corruption, they were considered to have betrayed him and were punished harshly. Official life is not a one-day affair, so officials cooperated with Yongzheng for the greater good. Harsh punishment was also something they feared.
The repetition-reciprocity hypothesis states that altruistic behavior occurs when reciprocity and repetition are satisfied. The altruistic behavior here is not altruistic in the true sense of the word. Of course, from a third party’s perspective, each act of cooperation can be considered altruistic if viewed independently. It’s like driving on a goblin road in Jeju Island. The road may look like it’s going uphill at one point, but it’s actually going downhill. Similarly, altruistic behavior is often motivated by self-interest. Yongzheng was able to get local officials to stop being corrupt, allowing more taxes to come to the center than before. The increased taxes were more than the total amount of silver paid to officials, making the country richer than before. No wonder the emperor’s power was consolidated. Never did Yongzheng do anything to his own detriment. This does not fit the definition of altruistic behavior, which is one that benefits others but hurts oneself. It’s important to realize that selfish behavior is often masked as altruism in order to achieve long-term benefits.
The reciprocity hypothesis also comes in many forms in the complex web of relationships in human society. For example, it applies to cooperative relationships between companies, alliances in international politics, and even friendships between individuals. Businesses collaborate for mutual benefit, nations form alliances based on mutual trust, and individuals maintain close relationships through trust and cooperation. In these relationships, altruistic behavior becomes a strategy for long-term gain, not just for moral reasons.
So far, we’ve followed the repetition-reciprocity hypothesis as it explains altruistic behavior. Reciprocity and repetition are compelling because they are easy to find in the real world. People rarely cooperate or betray others unconditionally, and we are exposed to many repetitive relationships. The repetition-reciprocity hypothesis suggests that altruistic behavior can also occur in relationships with non-kin, and thus goes beyond the explanatory scope of the kin selection hypothesis, which relies on kinship. However, there are also limitations to the reciprocity hypothesis. As the name “repetition-reciprocity” suggests, repetition is at the core of this hypothesis, and it cannot fully explain why people cooperate in non-recurring relationships. For example, people are willing to tip at a restaurant in a faraway country that they will never visit again. If our society tends to cluster with people who engage in altruistic behavior, then cooperative behavior can be maintained and evolve in non-repetitive situations. We need a theory that logically explains this.
