Tünde Paál
Punishment as a Means of Competition: Implications for Strong Reciprocity Theory
Paál, Tünde; Bereczkei, Tamás
Authors
Tamás Bereczkei
Abstract
Strong negative reciprocity, that is, sanctions imposed on norm violators at the punisher’s own expense, has powerful cooperation-enhancing effects in both real-life and experimental game situations. However, it is plausible that punishment may obtain alternative roles depending on social context and the personality characteristics of participants. We examined the occurrence of punishing behavior among 80 subjects in a strongly competitive Public Goods game setting. Despite the punishment condition, the amount of the contributions decreased steadily during the game. The amount of contributions had no significant effect on received and imposed punishments. The results indicate that certain social contexts (in this case, intensive competition) exert modifying effects on the role that punishment takes on. Subjects punished each other in order to achieve a higher rank and a financially better outcome. Punishment primarily functioned as a means of rivalry, instead of as a way of second-order cooperation, as strong reciprocity suggests. These results indicate the need for the possible modification of the social conditions of punishment mechanisms described by the strong reciprocity theory as an evolutionary explanation of human cooperation.
Citation
Paál, T., & Bereczkei, T. (2015). Punishment as a Means of Competition: Implications for Strong Reciprocity Theory. PLoS ONE, 10(3), https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0120394
Journal Article Type | Article |
---|---|
Online Publication Date | Mar 26, 2015 |
Publication Date | Mar 26, 2015 |
Deposit Date | Jun 15, 2022 |
Journal | PLoS ONE |
Electronic ISSN | 1932-6203 |
Publisher | Public Library of Science |
Volume | 10 |
Issue | 3 |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0120394 |
Public URL | https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1201939 |
Additional Information | This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
You might also like
Male and female face of Machiavellianism: Opportunism or anxiety?
(2017)
Journal Article
Downloadable Citations
About Durham Research Online (DRO)
Administrator e-mail: dro.admin@durham.ac.uk
This application uses the following open-source libraries:
SheetJS Community Edition
Apache License Version 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/)
PDF.js
Apache License Version 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/)
Font Awesome
SIL OFL 1.1 (http://scripts.sil.org/OFL)
MIT License (http://opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.html)
CC BY 3.0 ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)
Powered by Worktribe © 2024
Advanced Search