Consensual punishment does not promote cooperation in the six-person prisoner's dilemma game with noisy public monitoring

Abstract

We study the effects of different punishment institutions on cooperation in a six-person prisoner’s dilemma game in which actors observe others’ cooperation with some noise (i.e. imperfect public monitoring). Previous research has shown that peer punishment can sustain cooperation, if a certain proportion of group members punish defectors at a cost to themselves. However, in the presence of noise, co-operators will sometimes be mistaken for defectors and punished, and defectors will sometimes be mistaken for co-operators and escape punishment. Both types of mistakes are detrimental for cooperation because cooperation is discouraged and defection is encouraged. By means of a laboratory experiment, we study whether this adverse effect of noise can be mitigated by consensual punishment. The more other group members have to agree on punishing a defector, the less likely will a co-operator be punished by mistake. We compare a punishment institution in which each subject decides individually whether to punish another, with institutions in which punishments are only implemented if subjects reach sufficient consensus that a particular group member should be punished. In conditions without noise, we find that cooperation and subjects’ payoffs are higher if more consensus is required before a punishment is implemented. In conditions with noise, cooperation is lower if more consensus is required. Moreover, with noise, subjects’ payoffs are lower under all punishment institutions than in the control condition without punishment opportunities. Our results narrow down the conditions under which punishment institutions can promote cooperation if such cooperation is noisy.

Punishment: one tool, many uses

“…Evidence that cooperation is higher when punishment is possible (compared with when it is not) has often been taken as evidence that punishment causes cheaters to cooperate in future rounds (Ambrus and Greiner 2012 ; Cinyabuguma et al 2006 ; Fehr and Gächter 2000 , 2002a ; Fischer et al . 2016 ; Masclet et al 2003 ; Ones and Putterman 2007 ; Page et al 2013 ; Pfattheicher et al 2018 ; Reuben and Riedl 2009 ; Rockenbach and Milinski 2006 ; van Miltenburg et al 2017 ). However, we suggest that this conclusion is premature because the evidence is correlational, with several alternative explanations that need to be excluded.…”

“…Prediction 1: Punishers should also be cooperative individuals In many models, the tendency to punish defectors is assumed to be linked to the tendency to cooperate, meaning that a punisher can also be assumed to be a cooperator (although the reverse is not necessarily true; Andrés Guzmán et al 2007;Bowles and Gintis 2004;Boyd et al 2003;Boyd and Richerson 1992;Henrich and Boyd 2001, but see Huang et al 2018;Eriksson et al 2014;Lehmann et al 2007;Úbeda and Duéñez-Guzmán 2011). This assumption has also been described in terms of a psychological propensity to behave as a strong reciprocator (an individual that has a preference to conditionally cooperate and to punish non-cooperators; Gintis 2000).…”

“…While we are sympathetic to the fact that the colloquial use of the word punishment may admit such cases, these scenarios are relatively unproblematic to explain from an evolutionary perspective. More puzzling is when and why a tendency to invest in behaviour directed at harming others can ever be under positive selectionand as such we prefer to stick with definitions that assume that punishment is at least temporarily costly to administer (Úbeda and Duéñez-Guzmán 2011).…”

Self-Governance in Generalized Exchange. A Laboratory Experiment on the Structural Embeddedness of Peer Punishment

“…Recently, however, scholars have identified various conditions under which peer punishment fails to create beneficial outcomes [4,5]. In particular, the success of peer punishment depends on social factors external to the individual [6], such as the information conditions [7,8], the institutional mechanisms coordinating punishment [9], or the status differentials within a group [10,11]. Against this background, it seems surprising that the accumulated evidence on peer punishment almost exclusively stems from public good structures, whereas cooperation problems arise in various structural forms.…”