Trends in Ecology & Evolution
ReviewPunish or perish? Retaliation and collaboration among humans
Section snippets
Introduction: reciprocation and social enforcement
How do humans manage to sustain collective efforts in sizable groups of unrelated individuals? This topic is in fashion but not new. In 1975, for instance, W.D. Hamilton closed his essay on ‘Innate Social Aptitudes of Man’ [1] with a section on ‘Reciprocation and Social Enforcement’. Humans have a special gift for reciprocation. However, in interactions involving more than two individuals, reciprocation works less well than in pairwise encounters. Even defining it is a non-trivial task. If your
Fining free-riders
Let us begin with an experimental ‘public good’ game. Six anonymous players are given $10 each. They must decide whether to invest this in a common pool, knowing that the experimenter will triple the amount in the common pool, and distribute it equally among all six players, irrespective of whether they contributed.
This game is easy to analyze. If all players contribute, they triple their endowments. However, each player is better off by not contributing because only half of the contribution
Sanctions and social dilemmas
The investigation of the interplay between mutual assistance and social enforcement is a booming enterprise. Economists use experimental games to study the effects of positive and negative incentives (i.e. reward and punishment) on our propensity to collaborate 6, 7; anthropologists visit small-scale societies to measure the culture dependence and universality of norms that enforce cooperation [8]; psychologists study the often subconscious cues eliciting emotions that lead to helping behavior
Ultimate reasons of costly punishment
Altruistic behavior and selfish genes provide a favorite playground for theories on the evolution of cooperation, and have led to a rich toolbox (Box 2). Does this toolbox offer an explanation for our propensity to punish cheaters in public good interactions? How can the trait emerge, and how can it be maintained (Box 3)?
Two evolutionary approaches to these questions are based on group selection, and invoke selective group extinction 29, 30. It seems likely that intergroup conflict was frequent
Proximate causes of costly punishment
It makes no sense to assume that ultimatum games or public good games, in their clinical sterility, have shaped our evolution, although human behavior in these games is based on evolved traits. The stark artificiality of economic experiments helps (as in physics or physiology) to reveal the mechanisms underlying these traits.
It seems from cross-cultural studies that the readiness to inflict costly punishment on cheaters is a human universal [8]. It varies across societies but is strongly
The limitations of peer-punishment
Although punishment works to boost cooperation, it can also be counterproductive. It often lowers the average income in public good games, despite raising the average level of contributions. In games of trust, or games involving rewards, adding the threat of punishment can decrease the menaced player's willingness to cooperate [60]. In a particularly elegant set of experiments, it has been shown that, if players of a public good game are offered before each round the choice between the versions
Acknowledgement
I would like to thank Hannelore Brandt, Robert Boyd, Daniel Fessler, Simon Gächter, Manfred Milinski, Mayuko Nakamaru, Martin Nowak and Bettina Rockenbach for helpful discussions. This work was funded by EUROCORES TECT I–104–G15.
References (74)
- et al.
Altruism, fairness and reciprocity in a gift-exchange experiment: an encompassing approach
Games Econ. Behav.
(2002) Punitive sentiment as an anti-free rider psychological device
Evol. Hum. Behav.
(2002)- et al.
The evolution of altruism and punishment: role of the selfish punisher
J. Theor. Biol.
(2006) - et al.
Why people punish defectors
J. Theor. Biol.
(2001) - et al.
The impact of social approval and framing on cooperation in public good situations
J. Public Econ.
(2004) Altruistic punishing and helping differ in sensitivity to relatedness, friendship, and future interactions
Evol. Hum. Behav.
(2005)- et al.
Nobody's watching? Subtle cues affect generosity in an anonymous economic game
Evol. Hum. Behav.
(2005) - et al.
Third-party punishment and social norms
Evol. Hum. Behav.
(2004) Positive reciprocity and intentions in trust games
J. Econ. Behav. Org.
(2003)Narrow Roads of Geneland, Collected Papers I
(1996)