The Advantage of Democratic Peer Punishment in Sustaining Cooperation within Groups

Abstract

In social dilemma situations, individuals benefit from uncooperative behavior while exploiting resources of the collective. One prominent solution to prevent uncooperative behavior and to increase cooperation is to establish a system of costly peer punishment, that is, the possibility for every individual involved in the dilemma to impose costly punishment on interaction partners. However, recent research revealed that, in contrast to a situation without punishment, peer punishment is inefficient and maladaptive in the sense that the total payoff is reduced and punishment of cooperative individuals (i.e., antisocial punishment) is possible. In the present work, we propose that a system of democratic peer punishment, that is, direct and equal participation of each individual in the punishment decision-making process with punishment only executed when a majority has voted for its execution, can address the shortcomings of a peer punishment system. Using iterated public goods games, we show higher cooperation levels, higher total payoffs, and reduced executed punishment in the democratic compared with a peer punishment system. Moreover, we document that fairness perceptions, satisfaction, and interpersonal trust are increased in the democratic punishment system. Implications for how cooperation and democratic punishment systems may evolve are discussed. democratic decisions about punishments, whereas in democratic decisions about positions (e.g., elections), the individual participation of potential holders of the respective position is more common.Cooperation and Democratic Peer Punishment 565 S. Pfattheicher et al.

Democracy matters: a psychological perspective on the beneficial impact of democratic punishment systems in social dilemmas

“…Replication of previous findings (H1-H4) Contribution. In line with our assumption and previous findings (Fehr and Gächter, 2002;Pfattheicher et al, 2018), average cooperation rates in systems with punishment were significantly higher compared to the system without punishment (H1). Focusing on the difference in cooperation levels between the different punishment options, cooperation levels further increased in the democratic punishment system compared to the peer punishment system.…”

“…An overview of all central findings is displayed in Tables 2 and 3. A more fine-tuned analysis focusing on cooperation levels and period payoff across the ten periods also replicated previous findings (Pfattheicher et al, 2018) can be found in the supplementary materials.…”

“…Ambrus et al (2017) found higher cooperation rates and net payoffs if individuals could vote directly for or against the execution of a fixed punishment amount of another individual. Pfattheicher et al (2018) replicated their findings by implementing a democratic peer punishment system in which individuals could not only vote for or against the execution of punishment of another individual, but the strength of the punishment was also determined by the group members. Their findings demonstrate one major advantage of voting systems compared to peer punishment systems: Cooperative individuals are less likely to be punished, that is, there is less executed antisocial punishment.…”

“…Furthermore, we extend previous findings by implementing two modified punishment systems, i.e., a modified peer punishment system and a modified democratic punishment system. Contrary to the systems by Pfattheicher et al (2018), in these new systems the costs of punishment are split equally among group members. Like in most societies, the cost of sanctioning an uncooperative individual are covered by the whole society (i.e., the cost for imprisonment is covered by tax money).…”

“…Our methodical procedure is based on the study by Pfattheicher et al (2018). That is, we implemented a system without punishment opportunities, a system with peer punishment, and a system with democratic punishment (see Table 1).…”