THE EVOLUTION OF PUNISHMENT IN n-PLAYER PUBLIC GOODS GAMES: A VOLUNTEER'S DILEMMA

Raihani, Nichola; Bshary, Redouan

doi:10.1111/j.1558-5646.2011.01383.x

Cited by 55 publications

(55 citation statements)

References 41 publications

(70 reference statements)

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“…However, because only one or a few individuals need to punish defectors in order to maintain high levels of cooperation within a group, punishment in nplayer public goods games can also be studied as a volunteer's dilemma (Przepiorka & Diekmann, 2013;Raihani & Bshary, 2011). The benefit of punishment is then a non-linear function of the number of punishers, i.e.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reputation based on punishment rather than generosity allows for evolution of cooperation in sizable groups

Santos

Wedekind

2015

Evolution and Human Behavior

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Citation: dos Santos M., Wedekind C. 2015. Reputation based on punishment rather than generosity allows for evolution of cooperation in sizable groups. Evolution and Human Behavior 36(1): 59-64.The content of this preprint is identical with the published paper except from small edits made at proofs. AbstractCooperation among unrelated individuals can arise if decisions to help others can be based on reputation. While working for dyadic interactions, reputation-use in social dilemmas involving many individuals (e.g. public goods games) becomes increasingly difficult as groups become larger and errors more frequent. Reputation is therefore believed to have played a minor role for the evolution of cooperation in collective action dilemmas such as those faced by early humans. Here, we show in computer simulations that a reputation system based on punitive actions can overcome these problems and, compared to reputation system based on generous actions, (i) is more likely to lead to the evolution of cooperation in sizable groups, (ii) more effectively sustains cooperation within larger groups, and (iii) is more robust to errors in reputation assessment. Punishment and punishment reputation could therefore have played crucial roles in the evolution of cooperation within larger groups of humans.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reputation based on punishment rather than generosity allows for evolution of cooperation in sizable groups

Santos

Wedekind

2015

Evolution and Human Behavior

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“…To illustrate the possible strategic considerations of the players, let us calculate the symmetric subgame perfect equilibria for the one-shot public good game. (i) Without second-order punishment, the decision to pay taxes becomes a volunteer's dilemma (41)(42)(43): subjects benefit from the presence of a punishment authority, but they want others to pay the taxes. The symmetric solution to this dilemma is to pay taxes with a certain probability q T .…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Democratic decisions establish stable authorities that overcome the paradox of second-order punishment

Hilbe

Traulsen

Röhl

et al. 2013

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Individuals usually punish free riders but refuse to sanction those who cooperate but do not punish. This missing second-order peer punishment is a fundamental problem for the stabilization of cooperation. To solve this problem, most societies today have implemented central authorities that punish free riders and tax evaders alike, such that second-order punishment is fully established. The emergence of such stable authorities from individual decisions, however, creates a new paradox: it seems absurd to expect individuals who do not engage in second-order punishment to strive for an authority that does. Herein, we provide a mathematical model and experimental results from a public goods game where subjects can choose between a community with and without second-order punishment in two different ways. When subjects can migrate continuously to either community, we identify a bias toward institutions that do not punish tax evaders. When subjects have to vote once for all rounds of the game and have to accept the decision of the majority, they prefer a society with second-order punishment. These findings uncover the existence of a democracy premium. The majority-voting rule allows subjects to commit themselves and to implement institutions that eventually lead to a higher welfare for all.evolution of cooperation | pool punishment | institution formation T he success of collective action and the maintenance of commonly shared infrastructure is often endangered by free riders, subjects who reap the benefits of public goods without contributing to them (1, 2). To mitigate the free riders' destructive potential, many communities install specialized authorities that monitor the subjects' behavior and sanction wrong-doers (3-7). Examples, such as modern courts and the police system, indicate that the maintenance of such institutions is costly. They also constitute a commonly shared infrastructure, which can be exploited just as the original public good that the institution was designed for to protect. Thus, a second-order dilemma arises.Second-order dilemmas appear in various forms and are considered as a serious obstacle to the evolution of cooperation (8-10). For example, in the absence of a policing authority, group members may take the job onto themselves, punishing others directly. There is overwhelming evidence that subjects are willing to sanction free riders at a cost to themselves (11-14), although individuals typically refuse to exert second-order punishment (15). However, peer punishment can have detrimental consequences on welfare, as the punishment costs may override the benefits of increased cooperation (16) and due to the problems of antisocial punishment (17) and retaliation (18,19). Peer punishment may pay in the long run, but only when interactions take place in small and stable groups (20). These restrictions may be the reason why modern states have abolished decentralized sanctioning (21).To explain the transition from decentralized peer punishment to institutional pool punishment (22), recent theoretic...

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“…It has been suggested, though, to conceive of the second-order free-rider problem as a volunteer's dilemma (VOD) [38] to better capture the strategic nature of the punishment situation [39,40]. The VOD (figure 1) represents a step-level public good game, where the public good is a nonlinear function of the number of cooperators.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Individual heterogeneity and costly punishment: a volunteer's dilemma

Przepiorka

Diekmann

2013

Proc. R. Soc. B.

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Social control and the enforcement of social norms glue a society together. It has been shown theoretically and empirically that informal punishment of wrongdoers fosters cooperation in human groups. Most of this research has focused on voluntary and uncoordinated punishment carried out by individual group members. However, as punishment is costly, it is an open question as to why humans engage in the punishment of wrongdoers even in one-time-only encounters. While evolved punitive preferences have been advocated as proximate explanations for such behaviour, the strategic nature of the punishment situation has remained underexplored. It has been suggested to conceive of the punishment situation as a volunteer's dilemma (VOD), where only one individual's action is necessary and sufficient to punish the wrongdoer. Here, we show experimentally that implementing the punishment situation as a VOD sustains cooperation in an environment where punishers and non-punishers coexist. Moreover, we show that punishment-cost heterogeneity allows individuals to tacitly agree on only the strongest group member carrying out the punishment, thereby increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of social norm enforcement. Our results corroborate that costly peer punishment can be explained without assuming punitive preferences and show that centralized sanctioning institutions can emerge from arbitrary individual differences.

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THE EVOLUTION OF PUNISHMENT IN n-PLAYER PUBLIC GOODS GAMES: A VOLUNTEER'S DILEMMA

Cited by 55 publications

References 41 publications

Reputation based on punishment rather than generosity allows for evolution of cooperation in sizable groups

Reputation based on punishment rather than generosity allows for evolution of cooperation in sizable groups

Democratic decisions establish stable authorities that overcome the paradox of second-order punishment

Individual heterogeneity and costly punishment: a volunteer's dilemma

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