IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jgames/v1y2010i1p18-33d7469.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Punishment, Cooperation, and Cheater Detection in “Noisy” Social Exchange

Author

Listed:
  • Gary Bornstein

    (Department of Psychology and Center for the Study of Rationality, The Hebrew University, Mount Scopus, Jerusalem 91905, Israel)

  • Ori Weisel

    (Department of Psychology and Center for the Study of Rationality, The Hebrew University, Mount Scopus, Jerusalem 91905, Israel)

Abstract

Explaining human cooperation in large groups of non-kin is a major challenge to both rational choice theory and the theory of evolution. Recent research suggests that group cooperation can be explained by positing that cooperators can punish non-cooperators or cheaters. The experimental evidence comes from public goods games in which group members are fully informed about the behavior of all others and cheating occurs in full view. We demonstrate that under more realistic information conditions, where cheating is less obvious, punishment is much less effective in enforcing cooperation. Evidently, the explanatory power of punishment is constrained by the visibility of cheating.

Suggested Citation

  • Gary Bornstein & Ori Weisel, 2010. "Punishment, Cooperation, and Cheater Detection in “Noisy” Social Exchange," Games, MDPI, vol. 1(1), pages 1-16, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jgames:v:1:y:2010:i:1:p:18-33:d:7469
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4336/1/1/18/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4336/1/1/18/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Klaus Abbink & Bernd Irlenbusch & Elke Renner, 2006. "Group Size and Social Ties in Microfinance Institutions," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 44(4), pages 614-628, October.
    2. Dawes, Robyn M & Thaler, Richard H, 1988. "Anomalies: Cooperation," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 2(3), pages 187-197, Summer.
    3. Ernst Fehr & Simon Gächter, 2002. "Altruistic punishment in humans," Nature, Nature, vol. 415(6868), pages 137-140, January.
    4. Herbert Gintis, 2000. "Strong Reciprocity and Human Sociality," UMASS Amherst Economics Working Papers 2000-02, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Department of Economics.
    5. Bettina Rockenbach & Manfred Milinski, 2006. "The efficient interaction of indirect reciprocity and costly punishment," Nature, Nature, vol. 444(7120), pages 718-723, December.
    6. Ostrom, Elinor & Walker, James & Gardner, Roy, 1992. "Covenants with and without a Sword: Self-Governance Is Possible," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 86(2), pages 404-417, June.
    7. Ernst Fehr & Urs Fischbacher, 2003. "The nature of human altruism," Nature, Nature, vol. 425(6960), pages 785-791, October.
    8. van Dijk, Eric & Grodzka, Malgorzata, 1992. "The influence of endowments asymmetry and information level on the contribution to a public step good," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 13(2), pages 329-342, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Evgeny Kagan & Stephen Leider & William S. Lovejoy, 2020. "Equity Contracts and Incentive Design in Start-Up Teams," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(10), pages 4879-4898, October.
    2. Bartoš, Vojtěch, 2021. "Seasonal scarcity and sharing norms," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 185(C), pages 303-316.
    3. Nynke van Miltenburg & Wojtek Przepiorka & Vincent Buskens, 2017. "Consensual punishment does not promote cooperation in the six-person prisoner's dilemma game with noisy public monitoring," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(11), pages 1-20, November.
    4. Attila Ambrus & Ben Greiner, 2012. "Imperfect Public Monitoring with Costly Punishment: An Experimental Study," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(7), pages 3317-3332, December.
    5. De Geest, Lawrence R. & Kingsley, David C., 2021. "Norm enforcement with incomplete information," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 189(C), pages 403-430.
    6. Alessandro Bucciol & Natalia Montinari & Marco Piovesan & Jean-Robert Tyran, 2014. "It Wasn't Me! Visibility and Free Riding in Waste Sorting," Discussion Papers 14-12, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics.
    7. Erte Xiao & Howard Kunreuther, 2016. "Punishment and Cooperation in Stochastic Social Dilemmas," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 60(4), pages 670-693, June.
    8. Patel, Amrish & Cartwright, Edward & Mark, Van Vugt, 2010. "Punishment Cannot Sustain Cooperation in a Public Good Game with Free-Rider Anonymity," Working Papers in Economics 451, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.
    9. Dekel, Sagi & Fischer, Sven & Zultan, Ro’i, 2017. "Potential Pareto Public Goods," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 146(C), pages 87-96.
    10. Simon Gaechter, 2014. "Human Pro-Social Motivation and the Maintenance of Social Order," CESifo Working Paper Series 4729, CESifo.
    11. Robbett, Andrea, 2016. "Sustaining cooperation in heterogeneous groups," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 132(PA), pages 121-138.
    12. Goeschl, Timo & Jarke, Johannes, 2014. "Trust, but verify? When trustworthiness is observable only through (costly) monitoring," WiSo-HH Working Paper Series 20, University of Hamburg, Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences, WISO Research Laboratory.
    13. Georg Kanitsar, 2021. "Self-Governance in Generalized Exchange. A Laboratory Experiment on the Structural Embeddedness of Peer Punishment," Games, MDPI, vol. 12(2), pages 1-16, June.
    14. Wang, Le & Chen, Tong & You, Xinshang & Wang, Yongjie, 2018. "The effect of wealth-based anti-expectation behaviors on public cooperation," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 493(C), pages 84-93.
    15. Avner Ben-Ner & Matthew Ellman, 2013. "The contributions of behavioural economics to understanding and advancing the sustainability of worker cooperatives," Journal of Entrepreneurial and Organizational Diversity, European Research Institute on Cooperative and Social Enterprises, vol. 2(1), pages 75-100, August.
    16. Goeschl, Timo & Jarke, Johannes, 2016. "Second and third party punishment under costly monitoring," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 124-133.
    17. Goeschl, Timo & Jarke, Johannes, 2013. "Non-Strategic Punishment when Monitoring is Costly: Experimental Evidence on Differences between Second and Third Party Behavior," Working Papers 0545, University of Heidelberg, Department of Economics.
    18. Feess, Eberhard & Schramm, Markus & Wohlschlegel, Ansgar, 2014. "The Impact of Fine Size and Uncertainty on Punishment and Deterrence: Evidence from the Laboratory," MPRA Paper 59463, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Robbett, Andrea, 2019. "Just ask? Preference revelation and lying in a public goods experiment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 165(C), pages 118-135.
    20. Christoph Engel, 2019. "When Does Transparency Backfire? Putting Jeremy Bentham's Theory of General Prevention to the Experimental Test," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 16(4), pages 881-908, December.
    21. Joseph P. Gaspar & Maurice E. Schweitzer, 2021. "Confident and Cunning: Negotiator Self-Efficacy Promotes Deception in Negotiations," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 171(1), pages 139-155, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Simon Gaechter & Benedikt Herrmann, 2008. "Reciprocity, culture, and human cooperation: Previous insights and a new cross-cultural experiment," Discussion Papers 2008-14, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.
    2. Yu, Tongkui & Chen, Shu-Heng & Li, Honggang, 2011. "Social Norm, Costly Punishment and the Evolution to Cooperation," MPRA Paper 28814, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Simon Gaechter & Benedikt Herrmann, 2008. "Reciprocity, culture, and human cooperation: Previous insights and a new cross-cultural experiment," Discussion Papers 2008-14, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.
    4. Christine Clavien & Colby J Tanner & Fabrice Clément & Michel Chapuisat, 2012. "Choosy Moral Punishers," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(6), pages 1-6, June.
    5. Ernst Fehr & Urs Fischbacher, "undated". "Third Party Punishment and Social Norms," IEW - Working Papers 106, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.
    6. Ernst Fehr & Urs Fischbacher, 2004. "Social norms and human cooperation," Macroeconomics 0409026, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Vallstrom, Daniel, 2025. "Cooperative Evolutionary Pressure and Diminishing Returns Might Explain the Fermi Paradox: On What Super-AIs Are Like," OSF Preprints bq438_v3, Center for Open Science.
    8. Murnighan, J. Keith & Wang, Long, 2016. "The social world as an experimental game," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 80-94.
    9. Shade T. Shutters, 2009. "Strong reciprocity, social structure, and the evolution of fair allocations in a simulated ultimatum game," Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, Springer, vol. 15(2), pages 64-77, June.
    10. Charles Noussair & Daan Soest & Jan Stoop, 2015. "Punishment, reward, and cooperation in a framed field experiment," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 45(3), pages 537-559, October.
    11. Elisabeth Gsottbauer & Jeroen den Bergh, 2013. "Bounded rationality and social interaction in negotiating a climate agreement," International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 13(3), pages 225-249, September.
    12. Guzmán, Ricardo Andrés & Rodríguez-Sickert, Carlos & Rowthorn, Robert, 2006. "When in Rome, do as the Romans do: the coevolution of altruistic punishment, conformist learning, and cooperation," MPRA Paper 2037, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Alexander Isakov & David Rand, 2012. "The Evolution of Coercive Institutional Punishment," Dynamic Games and Applications, Springer, vol. 2(1), pages 97-109, March.
    14. Rockenbach, Bettina & Wolff, Irenaeus, 2009. "Institution design in social dilemmas: How to design if you must?," MPRA Paper 16922, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Gächter, Simon & Herrmann, Benedikt, 2011. "The limits of self-governance when cooperators get punished: Experimental evidence from urban and rural Russia," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 55(2), pages 193-210, February.
    16. Tünde Paál & Tamás Bereczkei, 2015. "Punishment as a Means of Competition: Implications for Strong Reciprocity Theory," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(3), pages 1-14, March.
    17. Salazar, Verónica & Szentes, Balázs, 2024. "On the coevolution of cooperation and social institutions," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 161(C).
    18. repec:cgr:cgsser:06-02 is not listed on IDEAS
    19. Heller, William B. & Sieberg, Katri K., 2010. "Honor among thieves: Cooperation as a strategic response to functional unpleasantness," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 26(3), pages 351-362, September.
    20. Luisa Faust & Maura Kolbe & Sasan Mansouri & Paul P. Momtaz, 2022. "The Crowdfunding of Altruism," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 15(3), pages 1-29, March.
    21. Shultziner, Doron & Dattner, Arnon, 2006. "The Puzzle of Altruism Reconsidered: Biological Theories of Altruism and One-Shot Altruism," Ratio Working Papers 103, The Ratio Institute.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • C - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods
    • C7 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory
    • C70 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - General
    • C71 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Cooperative Games
    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • C73 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Stochastic and Dynamic Games; Evolutionary Games

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jgames:v:1:y:2010:i:1:p:18-33:d:7469. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.