HGP members find that, contrary to prior claims, the Ik people of Uganda are generous and cooperative.

Anthropologist Colin Turnbull famously claimed in his book The Mountain People that the Ik people of Uganda are extraordinarily selfish and mean.

HGP team member Cathryn Townsend spent all of 2016 with the Ik, with return trips in 2017 and 2018, and found quite the opposite. Ik culture includes traits that encourage generosity and other forms of cooperation, and Ik participants are just as generous as people in other societies in the context of an experimental economic game.

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