This study reminds me of the "reverse Milgram" experiment, in which people refused to obey authority figures when they thought their fake electrical stimulation was causing pleasure rather than pain.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=more-tit-than-tat Excerpt:“You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours,” we say, and “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” Conventional wisdom and decades of research point to the universal human tendency to reciprocate, responding to good or bad acts in kind. But if people only give as good as they get, how do conflicts escalate?
The answer, according to recent University of Chicago research, is that positive and negative reciprocity are not symmetrical: we retaliate against selfishness more than we reward generosity—even when the slights are only illusory.
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