We define social reciprocity as the act of demonstrating one's disapproval, at some personal
cost, for the violation of widely-held norms (e.g., don't free ride). Social reciprocity differs from
standard notions of reciprocity because social reciprocators intervene whenever a norm is
violated and do not condition intervention on potential future payoffs, revenge, or altruism.
Instead, we posit that social reciprocity is a triggered normative response. Our experiment
confirms the existence of social reciprocity and demonstrates that more socially efficient
outcomes arise when reciprocity can be expressed socially. To provide theoretical
foundations for social reciprocity, we show that generalized punishment norms survive in one
of the two stable equilibria of an evolutionary game with selection drift.
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