ArticleScientific reports2015
Punitive preferences, monetary incentives and tacit coordination in the punishment of defectors promote cooperation in humans.
Article in Scientific reports, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
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Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed.
- Free mobility across group boundaries promotes intergroup cooperation.Communications psychology · 2025Article
- Egoistic punishment outcompetes altruistic punishment in the spatial public goods game.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Evolution of coordinated punishment to enforce cooperation from an unbiased strategy space.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2019Article
- Article
- Heterogeneous groups overcome the diffusion of responsibility problem in social norm enforcement.PloS one · 2018Article
- Consensual punishment does not promote cooperation in the six-person prisoner's dilemma game with noisy public monitoring.PloS one · 2017Article
- Social image concerns promote cooperation more than altruistic punishment.Nature communications · 2016Article
- Collective action problem in heterogeneous groups.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2015Review
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
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Abstract
Peer-punishment is effective in promoting cooperation, but the costs associated with punishing defectors often exceed the benefits for the group. It has been argued that centralized punishment institutions can overcome the detrimental effects of peer-punishment. However, this argument presupposes the existence of a legitimate authority and leaves an unresolved gap in the transition from peer-punishment to centralized punishment. Here we show that the origins of centralized punishment could lie in individuals' distinct ability to punish defectors. In our laboratory experiment, we vary the structure of the punishment situation to disentangle the effects of punitive preferences, monetary incentives, and individual punishment costs on the punishment of defectors. We find that actors tacitly coordinate on the strongest group member to punish defectors, even if the strongest individual incurs a net loss from punishment. Such coordination leads to a more effective and more efficient provision of a cooperative environment than we observe in groups of all equals. Our results show that even an arbitrary assignment of an individual to a focal position in the social hierarchy can trigger the endogenous emergence of more centralized forms of punishment.
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