| Winners don't punish. | |
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MedLine Citation:
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PMID: 18354481 Owner: NLM Status: MEDLINE |
Abstract/OtherAbstract:
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A key aspect of human behaviour is cooperation. We tend to help others even if costs are involved. We are more likely to help when the costs are small and the benefits for the other person significant. Cooperation leads to a tension between what is best for the individual and what is best for the group. A group does better if everyone cooperates, but each individual is tempted to defect. Recently there has been much interest in exploring the effect of costly punishment on human cooperation. Costly punishment means paying a cost for another individual to incur a cost. It has been suggested that costly punishment promotes cooperation even in non-repeated games and without any possibility of reputation effects. But most of our interactions are repeated and reputation is always at stake. Thus, if costly punishment is important in promoting cooperation, it must do so in a repeated setting. We have performed experiments in which, in each round of a repeated game, people choose between cooperation, defection and costly punishment. In control experiments, people could only cooperate or defect. Here we show that the option of costly punishment increases the amount of cooperation but not the average payoff of the group. Furthermore, there is a strong negative correlation between total payoff and use of costly punishment. Those people who gain the highest total payoff tend not to use costly punishment: winners don't punish. This suggests that costly punishment behaviour is maladaptive in cooperation games and might have evolved for other reasons. |
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Authors:
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Anna Dreber; David G Rand; Drew Fudenberg; Martin A Nowak |
Publication Detail:
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Type: Journal Article; Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't; Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S. |
Journal Detail:
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Title: Nature Volume: 452 ISSN: 1476-4687 ISO Abbreviation: Nature Publication Date: 2008 Mar |
Date Detail:
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Created Date: 2008-03-20 Completed Date: 2008-04-21 Revised Date: 2011-09-21 |
Medline Journal Info:
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Nlm Unique ID: 0410462 Medline TA: Nature Country: England |
Other Details:
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Languages: eng Pagination: 348-51 Citation Subset: IM |
Affiliation:
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Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA. |
Export Citation:
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APA/MLA Format Download EndNote Download BibTex |
| MeSH Terms | |
Descriptor/Qualifier:
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Adult Altruism* Biological Evolution Cooperative Behavior* Female Game Theory* Humans Male Models, Psychological Punishment / psychology* Risk Assessment |
| Grant Support | |
ID/Acronym/Agency:
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R01 GM078986-02/GM/NIGMS NIH HHS |
| Comments/Corrections | |
Comment In:
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Nature. 2008 Mar 20;452(7185):297-8
[PMID:
18354472
]
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From MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine
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