Love or fear: Can punishment promote cooperation?

Abstract

Cooperation is a paradox: Why should one perform a costly behavior only to increase the fitness of another? Human societies, in which individuals cooperate with genetically unrelated individuals on a considerably larger scale than most mammals do, are especially puzzling in this regard. Recently, the threat of punishment has been given substantial attention as one of the mechanisms that could help sustain human cooperation in such situations. Nevertheless, using punishment to explain cooperation only leads to further questions: Why spend precious resources to penalize free-riders, especially if others can avoid this investment and cheaters can punish you back? Here, it is argued that current evidence supports punishment as an efficient means for the maintenance of cooperation, and that the gravity of proposed limitations of punishment for maintaining cooperation may have been overestimated in previous studies due to the features of experimental design. Most notably, the importance of factors as characteristic of human societies as reputation and language has been greatly neglected. Ironically, it was largely the combination of the two that enabled humans to shape costly punishment into numerous low-cost and less detrimental strategies that clearly can promote human cooperation.

Third-Party Punishment or Compensation? It Depends on the Reputational Benefits

“…The existence of a third-party punishment mechanism can provide deterrence to group members and reduce their violations to promote cooperation, but the implementation of it may reduce cooperation. Therefore, a third-party punishment mechanism could exist, but the third party should use it less (Chen et al, 2014 ; Kroupa, 2014 ). Even if punishment is imposed, the mild punishment is more appropriate than the intensive punishment (Chen et al, 2015 ).…”

“…In this study, we found that the punisher is considered to be less nice. Punishment has two sides: it can be both loved and feared (Gordon et al, 2014;Kroupa, 2014). Previous studies have found that punishers can win some good reputation, which, however, may not necessarily translate into practical benefits (Ozono and Watabe, 2012).In addition, the effect of punishment on promoting cooperation has also been questioned.…”

“…Fairness is an important social rule. Many studies have found that to maintain fairness, people often intervene in unfair events to which they are not connected, and this is referred to as third-party fairness maintenance (Fehr and Gächter, 2002 ; Fehr and Fischbacher, 2003 , 2004 ; Kroupa, 2014 ; Hu et al, 2015 ; Liu Y. et al, 2019 ). Compared with second-party fairness maintenance (Yamagishi et al, 2009 ), third-party fairness maintenance would be more neutral and impartial (Bendor and Swistak, 2001 ).…”

“…However, there is a dilemma that cannot be ignored: it will lead to an individual cost. If such dilemma continues, third parties involved in fairness maintenance would eventually be eliminated in the process of evolution, but in fact, third-party fairness maintenance is widespread in both the laboratory and the field (Fehr and Gächter, 2002 ; Fehr and Fischbacher, 2003 , 2004 ; Kroupa, 2014 ; Hu et al, 2015 ; Liu Y. et al, 2019 ). What, therefore, is the motivation for and evolutionary mechanism of third-party fairness maintenance?…”

“…Punishment and compensation not only convey the third parties' concern about fairness but also convey the information about their characteristic traits. Punishment can give people an impression of emotional instability and irritability, which can lead to others becoming feared; however, compensators can make people feel gentle and empathetic (Gordon et al, 2014 ; Kroupa, 2014 ; Raihani and Bshary, 2015b ). Clearly, the latter would be more preferable.…”