An economic experiment reveals that humans prefer pool punishment to maintain the commons - PubMed (original) (raw)

An economic experiment reveals that humans prefer pool punishment to maintain the commons

Arne Traulsen et al. Proc Biol Sci. 2012.

Abstract

Punishment can stabilize costly cooperation and ensure the success of a common project that is threatened by free-riders. Punishment mechanisms can be classified into pool punishment, where the punishment act is carried out by a paid third party, (e.g. a police system or a sheriff), and peer punishment, where the punishment act is carried out by peers. Which punishment mechanism is preferred when both are concurrently available within a society? In an economic experiment, we show that the majority of subjects choose pool punishment, despite being costly even in the absence of defectors, when second-order free-riders, cooperators that do not punish, are also punished. Pool punishers are mutually enforcing their support for the punishment organization, stably trapping each other. Our experimental results show how organized punishment could have displaced individual punishment in human societies.

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Figures

Figure 1.

Figure 1.

Overview over the relevant significant experimental results. In treatment (b), the introduction of second-order punishment led to a significant increase in the level of cooperation, a significant decrease in defection and a significant reduction in efficiency. In treatment (c), there is significantly more pool punishment than peer punishment in the absence of second-order punishment. If it is introduced, the level of defection and the use of peer punishment significantly decrease. The use of pool punishment significantly increases; the efficiency is reduced significantly. With second-order punishment, pool punishment prevails (i.e. the number of players using pool punishment is significantly different from 50%). Within treatment (a), the changes after the introduction of second-order punishment were not significant. See §3 for details.

Figure 2.

Figure 2.

Dynamics of decision-making in game 3, which had 25 rounds. (i) Fraction of decisions to cooperate, defect or act as a loner in the three treatments (see table 1 for details). (ii) Efficiency (i.e. the average payoff in euros) per individual per round, and the fraction of players using punishment (both quantities happened to be of a similar range). The vertical lines mark the introduction of second-order punishment after round 10, which has a large impact in the experiments with pool punishment, where it reduces the efficiency significantly. In treatments (a) and (c), the average level of cooperation is slightly affected by second-order punishment only, but in treatment (b), second-order punishment significantly increases the level of cooperation. In isolation, pool punishment is used much more frequently than peer punishment in the presence of second-order punishment. If we combine both forms of punishment, pool punishment clearly prevails and little peer punishment is used (averages over six groups in peer punishment and pool punishment, eight groups in peer and pool punishment).

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