Counterpunishment revisited: an evolutionary approach

Wolff, Irenaeus (2009): Counterpunishment revisited: an evolutionary approach.

Abstract

Evolutionary game theory has shown that in environments characterised by a social-dilemma situation punishment may be an adaptive behaviour. Experimental evidence closely corresponds to this finding but yields contradictory results on the cooperation-enhancing effect of punishment if players are allowed to retaliate against their punishers. The present study sets out to examine the question of whether cooperation will still be part of an evolutionary stable strategy if we allow for counterpunishment opportunities in a theoretic model and tries to reconcile the seemingly contradictory findings from the laboratory. We find that the apparent contradictions can be explained by a difference in the number of retaliation stages employed (one vs many) and even small differences in the degree of retaliativeness.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Public goods; Strong reciprocity; Conformism; Counter-punishment; Evolution of behavior
• Subjects: H - Public Economics > H4 - Publicly Provided Goods; H - Public Economics > H4 - Publicly Provided Goods > H41 - Public Goods; C - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods > C9 - Design of Experiments > C90 - General; C - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods > C7 - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory; C - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods > C7 - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory > C73 - Stochastic and Dynamic Games ; Evolutionary Games ; Repeated Games

References

Alexander, Richard D. (1979): Darwinism and Human Affairs. Seattle: University of Washington Press.

Alexander, Richard D. (1987): The Biology of Moral Systems. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.

Andrés Guzmán, Ricardo, Carlos Rodriguez-Sickert, and Robert Rowthorn (2007): When in Rome, do as the Romans do: the coevolution of altruistic punishment, conformist learning, and cooperation. Evolution and Human Behavior 28, 112-117.

Axelrod, Robert, and William D. Hamilton (1981): The Evolution of Cooperation Science 211, 1390-1396.

Bowles, Samuel, and Herbert Gintis (2004): The evolution of strong reciprocity: cooperation in heterogeneous populations. Theoretical Population Biology 65, 17-28.

Boyd, Robert, Herbert Gintis, Samuel Bowles, and Peter J. Richerson (2003): The evolution of altruistic punishment. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 100, 3531-3535.

Boyd, Robert, and Peter J. Richerson (1985): Culture and the Evolutionary Process. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Carpenter, Jeffrey P. (2007): Punishing free-riders: How group size affects mutual monitoring and the provision of public goods. Games and Economic Behavior 60, 31-51.

Carpenter, Jeffrey P., Peter H. Matthews, and Okomboli Ong'ong'a (2004): Why Punish? Social reciprocity and the enforcement of prosocial norms. Journal of Evolutionary Economics 14, 407-429.

Cavalli-Sforza, Luigi L., and Marcus W. Feldman (1981): Cultural Transmission and Evolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Decker, Torsten, Andreas Stiehler, and Martin Strobel (2003): A Comparison of Punishment Rules in Repeated Public Good Games. Journal of Conflict Resolution 47(6), 751-772.

Denant-Boemont, Laurent, David Masclet, and Charles Noussair (2007): Punishment, counterpunishment and sanction enforcement in a social dilemma experiment. Economic theory 33, 145-167.

Dreber, Anna, David G. Rand, Drew Fudenberg, and Martin A. Nowak (2008): Winners don't punish. Nature 452, 348-351.

Egas, Martijn, and Arno Riedl (2008): The economics of altruistic punishment and the maintenance of cooperation. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 275, 871-878.

Fehr, Ernst, and Simon Gächter (2002): Altruistic punishment in humans. Nature 415, 137-150.

Fehr, Ernst, and Simon Gächter (2000): Cooperation and Punishment in Public Goods Experiments. American Economic Review 90(4), 980-994.

Fehr, Ernst, and Joseph Henrich (2003): Is strong reciprocity a maladaption? On the evolutionary foundations of human altruism. In: Peter Hammerstein (ed.): Genetic and cultural evolution of cooperation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Fehr, Ernst, and Bettina Rockenbach (2003): Detrimental Effects of Sanctions on Human Altruism. Nature 422, 137-140.

Fischbacher, Urs, Simon Gächter, and Ernst Fehr (2001): Are People Conditionally Cooperative? Evidence from a Public Goods Experiment. Economic Letters 71(3), 397-404.

Fowler, James H. (2005): Altruistic punishment and the origin of cooperation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 102, 7047-7049.

Gächter, Simon, Elke Renner, and Martin Sefton (2008): The Long-Run Benefits of Punishment. Science 322, 1510.

Gintis, Herbert (2000): Strong Reciprocity and Human Sociality. Journal of Theoretical Biology 206, 169-179.

Gintis, Herbert, Samuel Bowles, Robert Boyd, and Ernst Fehr (2003): Explaining altruistic behavior in humans. Evolution and Human Behavior 24, 153-172.

Gintis, Herbert, Eric A. Smith, Samuel Bowles (2001): Costly Signaling and Cooperation. Journal of Theoretical Biology 213, 103-119.

Hamilton, William D. (1964): The genetical evolution of social behaviour. I and II Journal of Theoretical Biology 7, 1-52.

Hammerstein, Peter (ed.): Genetic and cultural evolution of cooperation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Hauert, Christoph, Arne Traulsen, Hannelore Brandt, Martin A. Nowak, and Karl Sigmund (2007) Via Freedom to Coercion: The Emergence of Costly Punishment. Science 316, 1905-1907.

Henrich, Joseph, and Robert Boyd (2001): Why People Punish Defectors: Weak Conformist Transmission can Stabilize Costly Enforcement of Norms in Cooperative Dilemmas. Journal of Theoretical Biology 208, 79-89.

Henrich, Joseph, and Natalie Henrich (2006): Culture, evolution and the puzzle of human cooperation. Cognitive Systems Research, Cognition, Joint Action and Collective Intentionality 7, 220-245.

Henrich, Joseph, and Richard McElreath (2003): The evolution of cultural evolution. Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews 12, 123-135.

Henrich, Joseph, Richard McElreath, Abigail Barr, Jean Ensminger, Clark Barrett, Alexander Bolyanatz, Juan C. Cardenas, Michael Gurven, Edwins Gwako, Natalie Henrich, Carolyn Lesorogol, Frank Marlowe, David Tracer, and John Ziker (2006): Costly Punishment Across Human Societies. Science 312, 1767-1770.

Herrmann, Benedikt, Christian Thöni, and Simon Gächter (2008): Antisocial Punishment Across Societies. Science 319, 1362-1367.

Hruschka, Daniel J., and Joseph Henrich (2006): Friendship, cliquishness, and the emergence of cooperation. Journal of Theoretical Biology 239, 1-15.

Ledyard, John O. (1995): Public Goods: A Survey of Experimental Research. In: John Kagel and Alvin Roth (eds.): Handbook of Experimental Economics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

McKenzie Alexander, Jason (2005): The Evolutionary Foundations of Strong Reciprocity. Analyse & Kritik 27, 106-112.

Kube, Sebastian, Andreas Nicklisch, and Christoph Engel (2009): personal communication.

Nicklisch, Andreas, and Irenaeus Wolff (2009): Governing the Sword: the Effects of a Basic Institution in a Social Dilemma. Working Paper.

Nikiforakis, Nikos (2008): Punishment and Counter-Punishment in Public Good Games: Can we really govern ourselves? Journal of Public Economics 92, 91-112.

Nikiforakis, Nikos, and Dirk Engelmann (2008): Feuds in the Laboratory? A Social Dilemma Experiment. Working Paper.

Nikiforakis, Nikos, and Hans-Theo Normann (2008): A Comparative Statics Analysis of Punishment in Public-good Experiments. Experimental Economics 11, 358-369.

Nowak, Martin A., and Karl Sigmund (1998): Evolution of indirect reciprocity by image scoring. Nature 393, 573-577.

Nowak, Martin A., and Karl Sigmund (2005): Evolution of indirect reciprocity. Nature 437, 1291-1298.

Ostrom, Elinor (2000): Collective Action and the Evolution of Social Norms. Journal of Economic Perspectives 14(3), 137-158.

Ostrom, Elinor, James M. Walker, and Roy Gardner (1992): Covenants With and Without a Sword: Self-Governance is Possible. The American Political Science Review 86, 404-417.

de Quervain, Dominique J. F., Urs Fischbacher, Valerie Treyer, Melanie Schellhammer, Ulrich Schnyder, Alfred Buck, and Ernst Fehr (2004): The Neural Basis of Altruistic Punishment. Science 305, 1254-1258.

Richerson, Peter J., and Robert Boyd (2005): Not by Genes Alone Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Sethi, Rajiv (1996): Evolutionary stability and social norms. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 29, 113-140.

Sober, Elliott, and David S. Wilson (1998): Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Stephens, Christopher (2005): Strong Reciprocity and the Comparative Method. Analyse & Kritik 27, 97-105.

Sugden, Robert (1986): The Economics of Rights, Co-operation, and Welfare. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Limited.

Taylor, Peter D., and Leo B. Jonker (1978): Evolutionary stable strategies and game dynamics. Mathematical Biosciences 40, 145-156.

Trivers, Robert L. (1971): The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism. Quarterly Review of Biology 46, 35-57.

Yamagishi, Toshio (1986): The Provision of a Sanctioning System as a Public Good. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Review 51, 110-116.

Zafar, Basit (2009): An Experimental Investigation of Why Individuals Conform. Federal Reserve Bank of New York Staff Reports 365.

Zahavi, Amotz (1975): Mate selection--A selection for a handicap. Journal of Theoretical Biology 53, 205-214.