Punishment can promote defection in group-structured populations

DOI10.1016/J.JTBI.2012.07.010MaRDI QIDQ293754zbMATH OpenOpenAlexWikidataFDO

Authors Simon T. Powers, Daniel J. Taylor, Joanna J. Bryson

Publication date 9 June 2016

Published in Journal of Theoretical Biology (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1206.4476

zbMATH Keywords

equilibrium selectionanti-social punishmentbehavioural economicspublic goodsstrong reciprocity

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Models of societies, social and urban evolution (91D10) Cooperative games (91A12) Public goods (91B18)

Abstract: 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.

Recommendations

• Coordinated punishment of defectors sustains cooperation and can proliferate when rare
• Punishment does not promote cooperation under exploration dynamics when anti-social punishment is possible
• The public goods game with shared punishment cost in well-mixed and structured populations
• Runaway selection for cooperation and strict-and-severe punishment
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Cited in

(12)

• Prejudice, privilege, and power: conflicts and cooperation between recognizable groups
• Leaving the loners alone: evolution of cooperation in the presence of antisocial punishment
• Should law keep pace with society? Relative update rates determine the co-evolution of institutional punishment and citizen contributions to public goods
• Sanctions as honest signals -- the evolution of pool punishment by public sanctioning institutions
• Competition of tolerant strategies in the spatial public goods game
• The public goods game with shared punishment cost in well-mixed and structured populations
• The unification of evolutionary dynamics through the Bayesian decay factor in a game on a graph
• Cooperation and punishment in community-structured populations with migration
• Punishment does not promote cooperation under exploration dynamics when anti-social punishment is possible
• Coordinated punishment of defectors sustains cooperation and can proliferate when rare
• Runaway selection for cooperation and strict-and-severe punishment
• Evolving cooperation in spatial population with punishment by using PSO algorithm

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