Cooperation and Punishment in Public Goods Experiments

Fehr, Ernst; Gächter, Simon

doi:10.1257/aer.90.4.980

Cited by 3,622 publications

(2,714 citation statements)

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“…It may be worthwhile to perform a more ecologically valid experiment, such as Oda's (1997) experiment involving face recognition in the prisoner's dilemma game, but involving participants who actually play with real people. Such an experiment could use a task such as the public goods game (e.g., Fehr and Gächter 2000), which is like a prisoner's dilemma and allows a continuum of responses rather than a dichotomous cooperate/defect decision.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do people differentially remember cheaters?

Barclay¹,

Lalumière²

2006

Hum Nat

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The evolution of reciprocal altruism probably involved the evolution of mechanisms to detect cheating and remember cheaters. In a well-known study, Mealey, Daood, and Krage (1996) observed that participants had enhanced memory for faces that had previously been associated with descriptions of acts of cheating. There were, however, problems with the descriptions that were used in that study. We sought to replicate and extend the findings of Mealey and colleagues by using more controlled descriptions and by examining the possibility of enhanced altruist recognition. We also examined whether individual differences in cheating tendencies were related to cheater and altruist recognition. In the first experiment, 164 undergraduates saw 40 faces that were paired with character descriptions representing the categories cheating, trustworthiness, altruism, or neutral, for individuals who had either low or high social status. One week later participants reported which faces they recognized from the previous week (among 80 faces). Overall, the results failed to replicate the findings of Mealey and her colleagues, as there was no enhanced memory for cheaters. In addition, there was no enhanced memory for altruists, and no effect of participants' cheating tendencies. A second experiment using a slightly different methodology produced similar results, with some evidence for enhanced memory for altruists.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do people differentially remember cheaters?

Barclay¹,

Lalumière²

2006

Hum Nat

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“…However, many humans can adapt quickly and fine-tune their actions to their social environment. Players do not merely respond 6 to the threat of punishment or the promise of a reward, but they update constantly, taking account of their experience [5]. If players are told that they will be re-matched with the same co-players, or that their decisions will be made known, they often change their behaviour, obviously motivated by concerns for longer-lasting interactions or for reputation [50][51][52][53].…”

Section: Proximate Causes Of Costly Punishmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Punish or perish? Retaliation and collaboration among humans

Sigmund

2007

Trends in Ecology & Evolution

270

238

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“…Although little new evidence has emerged to support this contention, a related explanation-harassment-may explain some instances of enforced cooperation in animals [8,47]. In humans, however, there is a rich literature describing the use of punishment in cooperative situations [48][49][50]. Some economists and anthropologists suggest that humans might have evolved a different and apparently unique form of cooperation called "strong reciprocity" [50].…”

Section: Punishmentmentioning

confidence: 99%