Do descriptive social norms drive peer punishment? Conditional punishment strategies and their impact on cooperation
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21651007 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Xueheng Li (0009-0007-8775-1972, University of Nottingham), Lucas Molleman (0000-0003-0184-4240, University of Amsterdam, corresponding author), Dennie Van Dolder (0000-0002-2498-8311, University of Nottingham) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 42 |
| Issue | 5 |
| Pages | 469-479 |
| Publication date | 2021-09-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Evolution and Human Behavior (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1090-5138 • E-ISSN: 1879-0607 |
| Publisher | Elsevier BV (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2021.04.002 |
| OpenAlex | W3108202999 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 76 |
Peer punishment is widely considered a key mechanism supporting cooperation in human groups. Although much research shows that human behavior is shaped by the prevailing social norms, little is known about how punishment decisions are impacted by the social context. We present a set of large-scale incentivized experiments in which participants (999 American participants recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk) could punish their partner conditional on either the level of cooperation or the level of punishment displayed by others who previously interacted in the same setting. While many participants punish independently of levels of cooperation or punishment, a substantial portion punishes free riding more severely when cooperation is more common (‘norm enforcement’), or when free riding is more severely punished by others (‘conformist punishment’). With a dynamic model we demonstrate that conditional punishment strategies can substantially promote cooperation. In particular, conformist punishment helps cooperation to gain a foothold in a population, and norm enforcement helps to maintain cooperation at high levels. Our results provide solid empirical evidence of conditional punishment strategies and illustrate their possible implications for the dynamics of human cooperation
Criminology · Enforcement · Political science · Sanctions · Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation · Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior · Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies · Law · Psychology · Social Psychology
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| Unique citing works | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2022 - 2025 (4) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 4 |