Prosocial Punishment Research Articles

Accountability mobilization, guanxi and social media‐induced polarization: Understanding the bystander's prosocial punishment to misinformation spreader

AbstractProsocial punishments by social media bystanders could block the path from misinformation spread to social media‐induced polarization (SMIP). However, prosocial punishments are inadequate for SMIP management because of the personal costs, and few studies propose effective ways to mobilize bystanders. The Chinese government implemented a regulation in 2017 to mobilize bystanders on social media through allocating accountability to act as misinformation supervisors. In China's guanxi culture, prosocial punishments are less observed considering the additional personal costs caused by breaking guanxi. Therefore, assessing the effectiveness of China's cyberspace accountability mobilization can help identify an effective tool for other governments to mitigate SMIP. We used a vignette survey experiment to collect data from WeChat users and applied a random regression model to analyse the data. Accountability mobilization significantly promotes bystanders' prosocial punishment to block the misinformation‐spread‐to‐SMIP path. Guanxi negatively moderates the relationship between accountability mobilization and prosocial punishment to the above path. The government could encourage the public to actively take prosocial punishments by using the new tool of accountability mobilization. Guanxi culture reduces the effectiveness of the tool.

Self-organization in mobile populations promotes the evolution of altruistic punishment

Altruistic punishment has been shown to sustain cooperation in social dilemmas. However, the influence of individual migration has often been overlooked in previous studies investigating the emergence of altruistic punishment. In this study, we address this gap by exploring the evolution of altruistic punishment in a mobile population. To capture the complexities of individual migration decisions, we propose a weighted migration model that incorporates individuals’ assessments of potential gains and losses. Our findings reveal that migration prioritizing potential benefits contributes to population clustering, and such spatial self-organization patterns play a vital role in promoting the flourishing of altruistic punishment. Conversely, when individuals are more inclined to avoid losses, it intensifies the dissolution of cooperative clusters and inhibits the evolution of cooperation. Moreover, our results suggest that pro-social punishment can still be maintained during the migration process, even in scenarios with low punishment efficiency, as long as individuals are capable of imposing sufficiently large amounts of punishments. This study provides valuable insights into the emergence and maintenance of altruistic punishment.

Rice Farming and the Origins of Cooperative Behaviour

Abstract This paper provides novel evidence for links between historic farming practices and current norms of cooperative behaviour. We hypothesise that the cooperation required in wetland rice farming gives rise to strong cultural norms of cooperativeness. We compare participants from prefecture cities that predominately practice wetland rice cultivation to those from non-rice regions. A public goods game with and without punishment is the main measure for cooperative behaviour. Results indicate a strong and robust positive effect of wetland rice farming on cooperative behaviour and pro-social punishment. Complementary, consistent evidence from a natural field experiment and a survey further enriches our data.

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.

Optimizing the social utility of judicial punishment: An evolutionary biology and neuroscience perspective.

Punishment as a response to impairment of individual or group welfare may be found not only among humans but also among a wide range of social animals. In some cases, acts of punishment serve to increase social cooperation among conspecifics. Such phenomena motivate the search for the biological foundations of punishment among humans. Of special interest are cases of pro-social punishment of individuals harming others. Behavioral studies have shown that in economic games people punish exploiters even at a cost to their own welfare. Additionally, neuroimaging studies have reported activity during the planning of such punishment in brain areas involved in the anticipation of reward. Such findings hint that there is an evolutionarily honed basic drive to punish social offenders. I argue that the transfer of punishment authority from the individual to the group requires that social offenders be punished as a public good, even if such punishment is not effective as retribution or deterrent. Furthermore, the social need for punishment of offenders has implications for alternatives to incarceration, publicity of punishment, and judicial structure.

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.

Generosity in dictator game and social value orientation predicted the type of costly punishment in ultimatum game.

The current study investigated two types of punishment (prosocial and proself punishment) in the ultimatum game (UG) and examined the impact of individuals' prosocial orientation on the costly punishment in the UG in a representative sample of Chinese undergraduate students (N=344). The prosocial orientation was measured with individuals' performance in the dictator game (DG), social value orientation (SVO), and the personal norm of reciprocity. Prosocial and proself punishers were established with responses in advantage and disadvantage offers in the UG. Results showed that prosocial and proself punishers coexisted in the UG, and prosocial punishers were more likely to be prosocial in SVO and allocated more resources to the recipient in the DG than proself punishers, but differences in positive/negative reciprocity between prosocial and proself punishers were not found. Further regression analysis found that SVO type and generosity in the DG could predict the type of punishers in the UG, but not positive/negative reciprocity. These findings indicate that individuals rejecting unfair offers in the UG may be motivated by either prosocial motivation with strict fairness concern (prosocial punishment) or selfish motivation with maximizing self-interest concern (proself punishment). Moreover, SVO type and generosity in the DG might be effective measures to discriminate prosocial and proself punishers in the UG.

Rice Farming and the Origins of Cooperative Behavior

This paper provides novel evidence for links between historic farming practices and current norms of cooperation. We hypothesize that the cooperation required in wetland rice farming gives rise to strong cultural norms of cooperativeness. We compare participants from prefecture cities that predominately practice wetland rice cultivation, to those from non-rice regions. A public goods game with and without punishment is the main measure for cooperativeness. Results indicate a strong and robust positive effect of wetland rice farming on cooperation and pro-social punishment. Complementary, consistent evidence from a natural field experiment and a survey further enriches our data.

Monitoring and punishment networks in an experimental common pool resource dilemma

AbstractWith the aid of a lab experiment, we explored how imperfect monitoring and punishment networks impacted appropriation, punishment and beliefs in a common pool resource appropriation dilemma. We studied the differences between the complete network (with perfect monitoring and punishment, in which everyone can observe and punish everyone else) and two ‘imperfect’ networks (that systematically reduce the number of subjects who could monitor and punish others): the directed and undirected circle networks. We found that free riders were punished in all treatments, but the network topology impacted the type of punishment: the undirected circle induced more severe punishment and prosocial punishment compared to the other two networks. Both imperfect networks were more efficient because the larger punishment capacity available in the complete network elicited higher punishment amount.

Evolutionary dynamics of cooperation in a population with probabilistic corrupt enforcers and violators

Pro-social punishment is a key driver of harmonious and stable society. However, this institution is vulnerable to corruption since law-violators can avoid sanctioning by paying bribes to corrupt law-enforcers. Consequently, to understand how altruistic behavior survives in a corrupt environment is an open question. To reveal potential explanations here, we introduce corrupt enforcers and violators into the public goods game with pool punishment, and assume that punishers, as corrupt enforcers, may select defectors probabilistically to take a bribe from, and meanwhile defectors, as corrupt violators, may select punishers stochastically to be corrupted. By means of mathematical analysis, we aim to study the necessary conditions for the evolution of cooperation in such corrupt environment. We find that cooperation can be maintained in the population in two distinct ways. First, cooperators, defectors, and punishers can coexist by all keeping a steady fraction of the population. Second, these three strategies can form a cyclic dominance that resembles a rock-scissors-paper cycle or a heteroclinic cycle. We theoretically identify conditions when the competing strategies coexist in a stationary way or they dominate each other in a cyclic way. These predictions are confirmed numerically.

Evolutionary dynamics in the public goods games with switching between punishment and exclusion

Pro-social punishment and exclusion are common means to elevate the level of cooperation among unrelated individuals. Indeed, it is worth pointing out that the combined use of these two strategies is quite common across human societies. However, it is still not known how a combined strategy where punishment and exclusion are switched can promote cooperation from the theoretical perspective. In this paper, we thus propose two different switching strategies, namely, peer switching that is based on peer punishment and peer exclusion, and pool switching that is based on pool punishment and pool exclusion. Individuals adopting the switching strategy will punish defectors when their numbers are below a threshold and exclude them otherwise. We study how the two switching strategies influence the evolutionary dynamics in the public goods game. We show that an intermediate value of the threshold leads to a stable coexistence of cooperators, defectors, and players adopting the switching strategy in a well-mixed population, and this regardless of whether the pool-based or the peer-based switching strategy is introduced. Moreover, we show that the pure exclusion strategy alone is able to evoke a limit cycle attractor in the evolutionary dynamics, such that cooperation can coexist with other strategies.

Social Undermining as Prosocial Peer Punishment

Groups want free-riders to be sanctioned, yet members do not have authority to formally punish the free-riders. In the present research, we posit that group members may sanction a free-riding peer ...

Second-Order Free-Riding on Antisocial Punishment Restores the Effectiveness of Prosocial Punishment

Economic experiments have shown that punishment can increase public goods game contributions over time. However, the effectiveness of punishment is challenged by second-order freeriding and antisocial punishment. The latter implies that non-cooperators punish cooperators, while the former implies unwillingness to shoulder the cost of punishment. Here we extend the theory of cooperation in the spatial public goods game by considering four competing strategies, which are traditional cooperators and defectors, as well as cooperators who punish defectors and defectors who punish cooperators. We show that if the synergistic effects are high enough to sustain cooperation based on network reciprocity alone, antisocial punishment does not deter public cooperation. Conversely, if synergistic effects are low and punishment is actively needed to sustain cooperation, antisocial punishment does act detrimental, but only if the cost-to-fine ratio is low. If the costs are relatively high, cooperation again dominates as a result of spatial pattern formation. Counterintuitively, defectors who do not punish cooperators, and are thus effectively second-order freeriding on antisocial punishment, form an active layer around punishing cooperators, which protects them against defectors that punish cooperators. A stable three-strategy phase that is sustained by the spontaneous emergence of cyclic dominance is also possible via the same route. The microscopic mechanism behind the reported evolutionary outcomes can be explained by the comparison of invasion rates that determine the stability of subsystem solutions. Our results reveal an unlikely evolutionary escape from adverse effects of antisocial punishment, and they provide a rationale for why second-order freeriding is not always an impediment to the evolutionary stability of punishment.

Costly Punishment Increases Prosocial Punishment by Designated Punishers: Power and Legitimacy in Public Goods Games

A classic problem in the literature on authority is that those with the power to enforce cooperation and proper norms of conduct can also abuse or misuse their power. The present research tested the argument that concerns about legitimacy can help regulate the use of power to punish by invoking a sense of what is morally right or socially proper for power-holders. We tested this idea in a laboratory experiment using public goods games in which one person in each group was selected to be a “designated punisher” who could give out material punishment that was either costly or costless to the punisher. Results show that costly punishment is perceived as more legitimate (proper) than costless punishment and that designated punishers engaged in more proper (“prosocial”) punishment and less abusive (“antisocial”) punishment when punishment was costly. These results highlight the importance of legitimacy in both motivating and regulating the enforcement of cooperation.

Competitions between prosocial exclusions and punishments in finite populations

Prosocial punishment has been proved to be a powerful mean to promote cooperation. Recent studies have found that social exclusion, which indeed can be regarded as a kind of punishment, can also support cooperation. However, if prosocial punishment and exclusion are both present, it is still unclear which strategy is more advantageous to curb free-riders. Here we first study the direct competition between different types of punishment and exclusion. We find that pool (peer) exclusion can always outperform pool (peer) punishment both in the optional and in the compulsory public goods game, no matter whether second-order sanctioning is considered or not. Furthermore, peer exclusion does better than pool exclusion both in the optional and in the compulsory game, but the situation is reversed in the presence of second-order exclusion. Finally, we extend the competition among all possible sanctioning strategies and find that peer exclusion can outperform all other strategies in the absence of second-order exclusion and punishment, while pool exclusion prevails when second-order sanctioning is possible. Our results demonstrate that exclusion is a more powerful strategy than punishment for the resolution of social dilemmas.

I’M SO ANGRY I COULD HELP YOU: MORAL OUTRAGE AS A DRIVER OF VICTIM COMPENSATION

Abstract:Recent behavioral economics studies have shown that third parties compensate players in Dictator, Ultimatum, and Trust games. However, there are almost no studies about what drives third parties to compensate victims in such games. It can be argued that compensation is a form of helping; and helping behavior, in a variety of forms, has been widely researched, especially with regard to motivators. Previous work on helping behavior has focused on empathic concern as a primary driver. In sharp contrast, anger is often seen as an antisocial motivator resulting in aggression. However, other research has shown that moral outrage, anger evoked by the violation of a moral rule or a social norm, can lead to the punishment of a perpetrator, often described as altruistic or pro-social punishment. Some of the motivations for pro-social punishment, namely a concern for justice or the restoration of community values, can also be realized through victim compensation. We therefore propose the hypothesis that moral outrage leads to compensating behavior above and beyond what is predicted by empathic concern, but only when a social norm has been violated. We test this hypothesis in two studies, both of which use modified trust games in which the investor experiences a loss due either to a social norm violation or some other cause. Study 1 shows that trait moral outrage predicts third-party compensatory behavior above and beyond empathic concern, but only when a social norm is violated. To better understand the causal mechanism, Study 2 directly manipulated moral outrage, showing again that moral outrage leads to compensation, but only when a social norm is violated.

Promote or hinder? The role of punishment in the emergence of cooperation

Investigation of anti-social punishment has shaken the positive role of punishment in the evolution of cooperation. However, punishment is ubiquitous in nature, and the centralized, apposed to decentralized, punishment is more favored by certain modern societies in particular. To explore the underlying principle of such phenomenon, we study the evolution of cooperation in the context of pro- and anti-social punishments subject to two distinct patterns: costly centralized and decentralized punishments. The results suggest that the pattern of punishment has a great effect on the role of punishment in the evolution of cooperation. In the absence of anti-social punishment, the costly centralized punishment is more effective in promoting the emergence of cooperation. Anti-social punishment can subvert the positive role of punishment when anti- and pro-social punishments are in the same pattern. However, driven by centralized pro-social punishment, cooperation can be more advantageous than defection even in the presence of decentralized anti-social punishment.

Punishment can promote defection in group-structured populations

Pro-social punishment, whereby cooperators punish defectors, is often suggested as a mechanism that maintains cooperation in large human groups. Importantly, models that support this idea have to date only allowed defectors to be the target of punishment. However, recent empirical work has demonstrated the existence of anti-social punishment in public goods games. That is, individuals that defect have been found to also punish cooperators. Some recent theoretical studies have found that such anti-social punishment can prevent the evolution of pro-social punishment and cooperation. However, the evolution of anti-social punishment in group-structured populations has not been formally addressed. Previous work has informally argued that group-structure must favour pro-social punishment. Here we formally investigate how two demographic factors, group size and dispersal frequency, affect selection pressures on pro- and anti-social punishment. Contrary to the suggestions of previous work, we find that anti-social punishment can prevent the evolution of pro-social punishment and cooperation under a range of group structures. Given that anti-social punishment has now been found in all studied extant human cultures, the claims of previous models showing the co-evolution of pro-social punishment and cooperation in group-structured populations should be re-evaluated.

Rock-scissors-paper and the survival of the weakest.

In the children's game of rock-scissors-paper, players each choose one of three strategies. A rock beats a pair of scissors, scissors beat a sheet of paper and paper beats a rock, so the strategies form a competitive cycle. Although cycles in competitive ability appear to be reasonably rare among terrestrial plants, they are common among marine sessile organisms and have been reported in other contexts. Here we consider a system with three species in a competitive loop and show that this simple ecology exhibits two counter-intuitive phenomena. First, the species that is least competitive is expected to have the largest population and, where there are oscillations in a finite population, to be the least likely to die out. As a consequence an apparent weakening of a species leads to an increase in its population. Second, evolution favours the most competitive individuals within a species, which leads to a decline in its population. This is analogous to the tragedy of the commons, but here, rather than leading to a collapse, the 'tragedy' acts to maintain diversity.