Antisocial Punishment Research Articles

The Impact of Cognitive Load on Cooperation and Antisocial Punishment: Insights from a Public Goods Game Experiment.

This paper investigates the impact of cognitive load on the formation and maintenance of cooperation within a public goods game experiment featuring a punishment option. By integrating the experimental designs of prior studies and manipulating cognitive load through the memorization of numbers with varying digits, we reveal that high cognitive load accelerates the breakdown of cooperation, irrespective of the presence of a punishment system. Furthermore, under high cognitive load, participants are more likely to engage in antisocial punishment, while the punishment of free riders remains unaffected. These findings suggest that increased cognitive load depletes the cognitive resources needed for deliberative decision-making, leading to a higher propensity for antisocial punishment. Our study contributes to the literature by demonstrating the significant influence of cognitive load on cooperative behavior and providing new insights into the causes of antisocial punishment.

People punish defection, not failures to conform to the majority

Do people punish others for defecting or for failing to conform to the majority? In two experiments, we manipulated whether the participants’ partners cooperated or defected in the majority of the trials of a Prisoner’s Dilemma game. The effects of this base-rate manipulation on cooperation and punishment were assessed using a multinomial processing tree model. High compared to low cooperation rates of the partners increased participants’ cooperation. When participants’ cooperation was not enforced through partner punishment, the participants’ cooperation was closely aligned to the cooperation rates of the partners. Moral punishment of defection increased when cooperation rates were high compared to when defection rates were high. However, antisocial punishment of cooperation when defection rates were high was much less likely than moral punishment of defection when cooperation rates were high. In addition, antisocial punishment was increased when cooperation rates were high compared to when defection rates were high. The latter two results contradict the assumption that people punish conformity-violating behavior regardless of whether the behavior supports or disrupts cooperation. Punishment is thus sensitive to the rates of cooperation and defection but, overall, the results are inconsistent with the idea that punishment primarily, let alone exclusively, serves to enforce conformity with the majority.

Social Expectations are Primarily Rooted in Reciprocity: An Investigation of Fairness, Cooperation, and Trustworthiness.

Social expectations guide people's evaluations of others' behaviors, but the origins of these expectations remain unclear. It is traditionally thought that people's expectations depend on their past observations of others' behavior, and people harshly judge atypical behavior. Here, we considered that social expectations are also influenced by a drive for reciprocity, and people evaluate others' actions by reflecting on their own decisions. To compare these views, we performed four studies. Study 1 used an Ultimatum Game task where participants alternated Responder and Proposer roles. Modeling participants' expectations suggested they evaluated the fairness of received offers via comparisons to their own offers. Study 2 replicated these findings and showed that observing selfish behavior (lowball offers) only promoted acceptance of selfishness if observers started acting selfishly themselves. Study 3 generalized the findings, demonstrating that they also arise in the Public Goods Game, emerge cross-culturally, and apply to antisocial punishment whereby selfish players punish generosity. Finally, Study 4 introduced the Trust Game and showed that participants trusted players who reciprocated their behavior, even if it was selfish, as much as they trusted generous players. Overall, this research shows that social expectations and evaluations are rooted in drives for reciprocity. This carries theoretical implications, speaking to a parallel in the mechanisms driving both decision-making and social evaluations, along with practical importance for understanding and promoting cooperation.

Social exclusion with antisocial punishment in spatial public goods game

In the spatial public goods game (SPGG), social exclusion is an effective strategy to quickly promote group cooperation. However, the second-order free riding occurs among cooperators who do not bear additional exclusion costs in the process of exclusion. To ensure that the exclusion strategy works while solving the second-order free-riding problem, we introduce an antisocial punishment strategy. The model employs four counterbalancing strategies: pure cooperators invest into the public pool; the defectors are the first-order free-riders of the cooperators; the excluders restrict the defectors from riding the cooperators with a certain probability, and the excluded defectors cannot share the benefits of the common pool; and the antisocial punishers punish the cooperators. Through the Monte Carlo simulations, we found that the cooperative excluders protected the cooperators from invasion by defectors and defective punishers, and more importantly, the second-order free-riding problem of the system was eliminated by the defective punishers.

The construction of peer punishment preference: how central power shapes prosocial and antisocial punishment behaviors

Peer punishment is a crucial determinant in the formation of cooperation between individuals. Previous studies show that prosocial and antisocial punishment behaviors coexist in societies as the two sides of peer punishment. Surprisingly, people show saliently different antisocial punishment behaviors across regions, while prosocial punishment behaviors remain consistent. This raises a crucial question: why do prosocial and antisocial punishments exhibit completely different characteristics across regions? We answer this question by presenting a two-stage evolutionary model of people’s peer punishment preference. We show that different central powers lead to discrepancies between people’s antisocial and prosocial punishment behaviors. Moreover, we find that central power determines evolutionary outcomes by influencing the proportion between three basic individual types of a population. Our model provides a possible explanation for cross-regional variations in antisocial punishment behavior and a new interpretation of social norms. More generally, it sheds light on a potential theory to unify the evolution of people’s coexisting prosocial and antisocial interactions.

PROMOTING COOPERATION IN A PUBLIC GOOD EXPERIMENT THROUGH OSTRACISM AS A PUNISHMENT MECHANISM

Ostracism is one form of real-life punishment mechanism to penalize uncooperative individuals in many societies. This paper aims to test whether ostracism enhances cooperation in the public good experiment by allowing group members to expel others based on the majority voting rule. The study also employed the modified public good experiment to categorize the contributors. The results showed that introducing ostracism increases contribution level by about 45 percentage points on average. However, some participants punished other members, even they contributed less than others or so-called anti-social punishment, suggesting that a third-party punishment may be another solution to sustain cooperation.

The cost of noise: Stochastic punishment falls short of sustaining cooperation in social dilemma experiments.

Identifying mechanisms able to sustain costly cooperation among self-interested agents is a central problem across social and biological sciences. One possible solution is peer punishment: when agents have an opportunity to sanction defectors, classical behavioral experiments suggest that cooperation can take root. Overlooked from standard experimental designs, however, is the fact that real-world human punishment-the administration of justice-is intrinsically noisy. Here we show that stochastic punishment falls short of sustaining cooperation in the repeated public good game. As punishment noise increases, we find that contributions decrease and punishment efforts intensify, resulting in a 45% drop in gains compared to a noiseless control. Moreover, we observe that uncertainty causes a rise in antisocial punishment, a mutually harmful behavior previously associated with societies with a weak rule of law. Our approach brings to light challenges to cooperation that cannot be explained by economic rationality and strengthens the case for further investigations of the effect of noise-and not just bias-on human behavior.

Antisocial punishment in the game

<p id="p00010">“Dirty work” refers to occupational activities that are physically disgusting, that symbolize degradation, that wound the individual’s dignity, or that run counter to the more heroic of our moral conceptions. Firstly, the definition of dirty work is defined from the perspective of objective work characteristics, subjective cognition and contingency, and individual stigma, occupational stigma and organizational stigma are differentiated from the three dimensions of generation, management and dissemination. Secondly, a process model of perceived threat of occupational stigma was constructed based on cognitive evaluation theory, including :(1) antecedents and characteristics of occupational stigma. Antecedents of occupational stigma can be divided into macro factors (laws/regulations/social policies and socio-cultural environment), medium factors (media) and micro factors (public, dirty workers and dirty characteristics of work). The characteristics of occupational stigma are concealability, controllability, centrality and Disruptiveness. (2) Strategies for managing occupational stigma. According to the object and level of change, management strategies can be divided into four categories: individual/behavioral strategy, individual/cognitive strategy, collective/behavioral strategy and collective/cognitive strategy. Individual/behavioral strategies, including personal mobility, information management and confronting or countering outsiders' perceptions of taint and outsiders' behaviours, mainly refer to the strategies used by dirty workers to avoid damage to their own image by keeping a distance from negative occupational groups and distracting the attention of the audience, or to change others' negative evaluation of dirty work by taking active actions. Individual/cognitive strategies, including individualized strategies, acceptance, and emotional labor, mainly refer to the strategies used by dirty workers to reduce the negative impact of occupational stigma by reconstructing their individual cognition. Collective/behavioral strategies, including social competition and realistic competition, mainly refer to the strategies used by dirty workers to improve their professional status and protect their self-esteem from threats associated with occupational stigma through inter-group competition. Collective/cognitive strategies, including occupational ideologies and social weighting, mainly refer to the strategies used by dirty workers to improve their job evaluations by challenging the validity of occupational stigma.; (3) The impact of occupational stigma on dirty workers. The results can be divided into three categories: based on mental health, attitudes and behaviors at work, and relationship outcomes. The effects on mental health are reflected in the stress and negative emotions experienced by dirty workers. The influence on work attitude and behavior is manifested in low job satisfaction, low job meaning perception, high relative deprivation, high dimission behavior, counterproductive work behavior, job burnout and low task performance. The influence on interpersonal relationship is reflected in the perception of social isolation, disrespect and discrimination of dirty workers in interpersonal communication. Potential future research directions are proposed: (1) To explore the sources of occupational stigma from a dynamic perspective; (2) To explore the path and effect of occupational stigma management based on individual and situational factors; (2)To consider diverse cultural backgrounds.

Cognitive load decreases cooperation and moral punishment in a Prisoner\u2019s Dilemma game with punishment option

The present study serves to test whether cooperation and moral punishment are affected by cognitive load. Dual-process theories postulate that moral behavior is intuitive which leads to the prediction that cooperation and moral punishment should remain unaffected or may even increase when cognitive load is induced by a secondary task. However, it has also been proposed that cognitive control and deliberation are necessary to choose an economically costly but morally justified option. A third perspective implies that the effects of cognitive load may depend on the specific processes involved in social dilemmas. In the present study, participants played a simultaneous Prisoner’s Dilemma game with a punishment option. First, both players decided to cooperate or defect. Then they had the opportunity to punish the partners. In the cognitive-load group, cognitive load was induced by a continuous tone classification task while the no-load group had no distractor task. Under cognitive load, cooperation and moral punishment decreased in comparison to the no-load condition. By contrast, hypocritical and antisocial punishment were not influenced by the dual-task manipulation. Increased cognitive load was associated with a bias to punish the partners irrespective of the outcome of the Prisoner’s Dilemma game, suggesting that punishment was applied less purposefully in the cognitive-load condition. The present findings are thus in line with the idea that the availability of cognitive resources does not always have a suppressive effect on moral behaviors, but can have facilitating effects on cooperation and moral punishment.

Reputation and punishment sustain cooperation in the optional public goods game.

Cooperative behaviour has been extensively studied as a choice between cooperation and defection. However, the possibility to not participate is also frequently available. This type of problem can be studied through the optional public goods game. The introduction of the 'Loner' strategy' allows players to withdraw from the game, which leads to a cooperator-defector-loner cycle. While pro-social punishment can help increase cooperation, anti-social punishment-where defectors punish cooperators-causes its downfall in both experimental and theoretical studies. In this paper, we introduce social norms that allow agents to condition their behaviour to the reputation of their peers. We benchmark this with respect both to the standard optional public goods game and to the variant where all types of punishment are allowed. We find that a social norm imposing a more moderate reputational penalty for opting out than for defecting increases cooperation. When, besides reputation, punishment is also possible, the two mechanisms work synergically under all social norms that do not assign to loners a strictly worse reputation than to defectors. Under this latter set-up, the high levels of cooperation are sustained by conditional strategies, which largely reduce the use of pro-social punishment and almost completely eliminate anti-social punishment. This article is part of the theme issue 'The language of cooperation: reputation and honest signalling'.

Evolution of prosocial punishment in unstructured and structured populations and in the presence of antisocial punishment.

A large body of empirical evidence suggests that altruistic punishment abounds in human societies. Based on such evidence, it is suggested that punishment serves an important role in promoting cooperation in humans and possibly other species. However, as punishment is costly, its evolution is subject to the same problem that it tries to address. To suppress this so-called second-order free-rider problem, known theoretical models on the evolution of punishment resort to one of the few established mechanisms for the evolution of cooperation. This leaves the question of whether altruistic punishment can evolve and give rise to the evolution of cooperation in the absence of such auxiliary cooperation-favoring mechanisms unaddressed. Here, by considering a population of individuals who play a public goods game, followed by a public punishing game, introduced here, we show that altruistic punishment indeed evolves and promotes cooperation in the absence of a cooperation-favoring mechanism. In our model, the punishment pool is considered a public resource whose resources are used for punishment. We show that the evolution of a punishing institution is facilitated when resources in the punishment pool, instead of being wasted, are used to reward punishers when there is nobody to punish. Besides, we show that higher returns to the public resource or punishment pool facilitate the evolution of prosocial instead of antisocial punishment. We also show that an optimal cost of investment in the punishment pool facilitates the evolution of prosocial punishment. Finally, our analysis shows that being close to a physical phase transition facilitates the evolution of altruistic punishment.

Punishment mechanisms and cooperation in public goods games: Experimental evidence

ABSTRACTThis paper proposes the majority‐voting punishment mechanism and compares its effect on the contribution decision with other punishment mechanisms when individuals have homogeneous or heterogeneous marginal per capita returns on public goods. The experimental results show that if individuals are homogeneous, the majority‐voting punishment mechanism is an alternative to encourage cooperation and reduce antisocial punishment. But, if individuals are heterogeneous, the individual and majority‐voting punishment mechanisms are similarly effective in promoting cooperation in the organization. Furthermore, whatever punishment mechanism is implemented, organizations should pay attention to the problem of antisocial punishment.

Punishment Strategies across Societies: Conventional Wisdoms Reconsidered

Experiments using the public goods game have repeatedly shown that in cooperative social environments, punishment makes cooperation flourish, and withholding punishment makes cooperation collapse. In less cooperative social environments, where antisocial punishment has been detected, punishment was detrimental to cooperation. The success of punishment in enhancing cooperation was explained as deterrence of free riders by cooperative strong reciprocators, who were willing to pay the cost of punishing them, whereas in environments in which punishment diminished cooperation, antisocial punishment was explained as revenge by low cooperators against high cooperators suspected of punishing them in previous rounds. The present paper reconsiders the generality of both explanations. Using data from a public goods experiment with punishment, conducted by the authors on Israeli subjects (Study 1), and from a study published in Science using sixteen participant pools from cities around the world (Study 2), we found that: 1. The effect of punishment on the emergence of cooperation was mainly due to contributors increasing their cooperation, rather than from free riders being deterred. 2. Participants adhered to different contribution and punishment strategies. Some cooperated and did not punish (‘cooperators’); others cooperated and punished free riders (‘strong reciprocators’); a third subgroup punished upward and downward relative to their own contribution (‘norm-keepers’); and a small sub-group punished only cooperators (‘antisocial punishers’). 3. Clear societal differences emerged in the mix of the four participant types, with high-contributing pools characterized by higher ratios of ‘strong reciprocators’, and ‘cooperators’, and low-contributing pools characterized by a higher ratio of ‘norm keepers’. 4. The fraction of ‘strong reciprocators’ out of the total punishers emerged as a strong predictor of the groups’ level of cooperation and success in providing the public goods.

High cooperation and welfare despite-and because of-the threat of antisocial punishments and feuds.

Cooperation can be difficult to sustain when there is a temptation to free-ride on the efforts of others. In experiments, peer punishment often stabilizes cooperation but fails to improve earnings because of the costs associated with punishment. In addition, antisocial use of punishment-punishing cooperators, counterpunishing, and feuding-often leads to lower cooperation and earnings. The current study investigated if powerful individuals-individuals who can punish without cost or who are immune from punishment-police the antisocial use of punishment, thus reducing the undesirable effects of punishment. In order to create ample opportunities for antisocial punishment and identify the motives for the use of punishment, our modified public goods game implemented fixed groups, fixed participant identifiers, 2 punishment stages, and full information about participant actions. The powerful participants with cost-free punishment or immunity punished low contributors more often, and immune participants also punished those who punished cooperators. Intriguingly, we found that whenever all participants could be punished-regardless of the cost of punishing or asymmetry in the cost-cooperation and net earnings reached very high levels. However, participants who were immune cooperated at a markedly low level, reducing earnings in the group. The results show that in an environment with repeated interactions, plenty of information, and everyone being accountable, even inefficient punishment can maintain high cooperation and earnings, but immunity of the powerful leads to corrupt behavior and reduced efficiency. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

The cost of noise: stochastic punishment falls short of sustaining cooperation in social dilemma experiments

Identifying mechanisms able to sustain costly cooperation among self-interested agents is a central problem across social and biological sciences. One possible solution is peer punishment: when agents have an opportunity to sanction defectors, classical behavioral experiments suggest that cooperation can take root. Overlooked from standard experimental designs, however, is the fact that real-world human punishment -- the administration of justice -- is intrinsically noisy. Here we show that stochastic punishment falls short of sustaining cooperation in the repeated public good game. As punishment noise increases, we find that contributions decrease and punishment efforts intensify, resulting in a $45\%$ drop in gains compared to a noiseless control. Moreover, we observe that uncertainty causes a rise in antisocial punishment, a mutually harmful behavior previously associated with societies with a weak rule of law. Our approach brings to light challenges to cooperation that cannot be explained by economic rationality and strengthens the case for further investigations of the effect of noise -- and not just bias -- on human behavior.

Supplemental Material for High Cooperation and Welfare Despite—and Because of—the Threat of Antisocial Punishments and Feuds

Supplemental Material for High Cooperation and Welfare Despite—and Because of—the Threat of Antisocial Punishments and Feuds

Uncovering the heterogeneity behind cross-cultural variation in antisocial punishment

Abstract Antisocial punishment in public good games, i.e., punishment of individuals who contributed the same or more than their punisher, varies substantially across cultures. We exploit the data of Herrmann et al. (2008) and implement an empirical strategy based on a finite mixture model to uncover the heterogeneity behind this variation. After we exclude 17.7% Type N subjects who never punish, estimating the finite mixture model reveals two distinct punisher types among the remaining subjects: 30.3% Type AF subjects who engage in antisocial punishment as well as free rider punishment and 52.0% Type F subjects who engage exclusively in free rider punishment. Moreover, we find that in cultures with high levels of antisocial punishment, Type AF subjects are more frequent. Despite the parsimony of this classification, the number of Type AF in a group predicts mean earnings in that group and enhances our understanding of the large variation in the effectiveness of peer punishment across cultures.

Collective punishment promotes resource conservation if it is not enforced

Managing extraction of forest resources is crucial for the stability of local eco-systems. The excessive extraction of forests by local communities has contributed to their rapid decline. Punishment has been suggested as a solution to this problem. However, evidence from common pool resource (CPR) experiments indicates that peer punishment generates high levels of anti-social punishment and retaliation, which undermines its positive impact on resource conservation. It has been shown that collective punishment solves these problems in public good games, but so far it has been ignored in the CPR studies. To fill this gap, we present the results from the CPR experiment with collective punishment. In the pool punishment (1OP) treatment, group members first decide on whether to pay the tax so as to establish a sanctioning institution. If the institution has been established, they vote on who to punish for overharvesting. In the second-order punishment (2OP) treatment, an additional penalty is imposed on tax evaders. We find that the sanctioning institution persists only in the presence of penalties for tax evasion. Surprisingly, their presence increases the probability of resource exhaustion. In particular, in the 2OP treatment, subjects extract more resources compared to the 1OP treatment to compensate for the loss of payoffs spent on taxes. In turn, pool punishment is successful in promoting resource conservation, but only in some groups. The key factor that determines why some groups prevent resource exhaustion, while others fail to do so, concerns how group members react to unfair punishment. In successful groups, penalties imposed on subjects, who extracted the least resources in the group, make them reduce extraction. Such penalties have the opposite effect in groups that exhausted resources.

Conditional neutral punishment promotes cooperation in the spatial prisoner's dilemma game

Punishment plays an important role in promoting cooperation. In real society, individuals tend to punish other players based on certain conditions rather than punish them directly. Thus, we introduce a conditional neutral punishment mechanism and study how this mechanism affects the evolution of cooperation. Namely, an individual can punish his/her neighbors with the opposite strategy when his/her payoff is lower than the average payoff of his/her neighbors. The simulation results show that this mechanism promotes cooperation effectively even with antisocial punishment. By adopting such a mechanism, cooperative punishers form shields to protect cooperators inside, while defective punishers hide behind defectors without punishing anyone.

Individual, Dictator, and Democratic punishment in public good games with perfect and imperfect observability

In the context of repeated public good contribution games, we experimentally compare the institution of democratic punishment, where members of a group decide by majority voting whether to inflict punishment on another member, with individual peer-to-peer and dictatorial punishment institutions. Democratic punishment leads to more cooperation and higher average payoffs, both under perfect and imperfect monitoring of contributions. A comparison with dictatorial punishment suggests that the effect relative to traditional peer-to-peer punishment primarily works by curbing anti-social punishment and thereby establishing a closer connection between a member's contribution decision and whether subsequently being punished by others.