Via Freedom to Coercion: The Emergence of Costly Punishment

By C. Hauert, Arne Traulsen, Hannelore Brandt, Martin A. Nowak, Karl Sigmund. Science, 2007

725 citations recorded by the source corpus.

In human societies, cooperative behavior in joint enterprises is often enforced through institutions that impose sanctions on defectors. Many experiments on so-called public goods games have shown that in the absence of such institutions, individuals are willing to punish defectors, even at a cost to themselves. Theoretical models confirm that social norms prescribing the punishment of uncooperative behavior are stable—once established, they prevent dissident minorities from spreading. But how can such costly punishing behavior gain a foothold in the population? A surprisingly simple model shows that if individuals have the option to stand aside and abstain from the joint endeavor, this paves the way for the emergence and establishment of cooperative behavior based on the punishment of defectors. Paradoxically, the freedom to withdraw from the common enterprise leads to enforcement of social norms. Joint enterprises that are compulsory rather than voluntary are less likely to lead to cooperation.

Subfields: Demography, Safety Research, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/535c78ba64af9cb2ae83b09a40c20243b332725a

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Citations in the corpus

Punish, but not too hard: how costly punishment spreads in the spatial public goods game (2010, neutral): “Punishment has been identified as one possible route to cooperation [17, 18], but its effectiveness depends on whether the participation in the public goods game is optional or not [19].”
Societal threat and cultural variation in the strength of social norms: An evolutionary basis (2015, neutral): “…cultural evolutionary pressures and how it can aid the evolution of cooperation (Brandt et al., 2003; Brandt et al., 2006; Hauert et al., 2002; Hauert et al., 2007; Henrich & Boyd, 2001; Hilbe & Traulsen, 2012; Jaffe & Zaballa, 2010; Traulsen, Hauert, De Silva, Nowak, & Sigmund, 2009; Ye et…”
The Heritability of Partisan Attachment (2009, background): “Evolutionary models of cooperation show that some environments favor group participation in the production of public goods, while other environments favor self-reliance because of the competition between contributors and free-riders (Fowler 2005; Hauert et al. 2007).”
Statistical physics of human cooperation (2017, background): “Accordingly, in well-mixed populations peer punishers cannot survive [74,229].”
Are Political Orientations Genetically Transmitted? (2005, background): “Evolutionary models of cooperation show that some environments favor group participation in the production of public goods, while other environments favor self-reliance because of the competition between contributors and free-riders (Fowler 2005; Hauert et al. 2007).”