Punishment can promote defection in group-structured populations

DOI10.1016/J.JTBI.2012.07.010zbMATH Open1337.91064arXiv1206.4476OpenAlexW2005804328WikidataQ50794350 ScholiaQ50794350MaRDI QIDQ293754FDOQ293754

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)

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.

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

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
• Synergy and discount of punishment in the public goods game

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)

Cites Work

• Via Freedom to Coercion: The Emergence of Costly Punishment
• Title not available (Why is that?)
• Strong altruism can evolve in randomly formed groups
• The evolution of altruism: game theory in multilevel selection and inclusive fitness
• Review: Game theory of public goods in one-shot social dilemmas without assortment
• A theory of group selection.
• The evolution of strong reciprocity: cooperation in heterogeneous populations
• On the founder effect and the evolution of altruistic traits
• Multi-level evolution in population games
• Coordinated Punishment of Defectors Sustains Cooperation and Can Proliferate When Rare
• Emergence of communication and language.
• Do non-strategic sanctions obey the law of demand? The demand for punishment in the voluntary contribution mechanism

Cited In (7)

• Competition of tolerant strategies in the spatial public goods game
• Evolving cooperation in spatial population with punishment by using PSO algorithm
• Should law keep pace with society? Relative update rates determine the co-evolution of institutional punishment and citizen contributions to public goods
• Punishment does not promote cooperation under exploration dynamics when anti-social punishment is possible
• Prejudice, privilege, and power: conflicts and cooperation between recognizable groups
• Sanctions as honest signals -- the evolution of pool punishment by public sanctioning institutions
• The unification of evolutionary dynamics through the Bayesian decay factor in a game on a graph

This page was built for publication: Punishment can promote defection in group-structured populations

Report a bug (only for logged in users!)Click here to report a bug for this page (MaRDI item Q293754)