Indirect Punishment and Generosity Toward Strangers

Ule, Aljaž; Schram, Arthur; Riedl, Arno; Cason, Timothy N.

doi:10.1126/science.1178883

Cited by 123 publications

(97 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…Combining contributions over many rounds therefore artificially amplifies the differences, leading to the appearance of statistical significance where none may exist. In fact, as Table 5 in [27] itself makes clear, the final (and also average) difference between topologies is roughly the same as the initial difference (period [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20]; thus essentially all of the difference can be explained in term of initial contributions, which are by construction unrelated to the network topology. Second, the significance of the NetworkClustering and NetworkLength coefficients in the PD1 logit model (Table 10 in [27]) is marginal and disappeared when other factors, such as the % cooperation in the previous experiment (PD2) or dummy variables for the session (PD3) were included.…”

Section: Testing For Effects Of Network Structurementioning

confidence: 83%

Cooperation and contagion in web-based, networked public goods experiments

2011

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A longstanding idea in the literature on human cooperation is that cooperation should be reinforced when conditional cooperators are more likely to interact. In the context of social networks, this idea implies that cooperation should fare better in highly clustered networks such as cliques than in networks with low clustering such as random networks. To test this hypothesis, we conducted a series of web-based experiments, in which 24 individuals played a local public goods game arranged on one of five network topologies that varied between disconnected cliques and a random regular graph. In contrast with previous theoretical work, we found that network topology had no significant effect on average contributions. This result implies either that individuals are not conditional cooperators, or else that cooperation does not benefit from positive reinforcement between connected neighbors. We then tested both of these possibilities in two subsequent series of experiments in which artificial seed players were introduced, making either full or zero contributions. First, we found that although players did generally behave like conditional cooperators, they were as likely to decrease their contributions in response to low contributing neighbors as they were to increase their contributions in response to high contributing neighbors. Second, we found that positive effects of cooperation were contagious only to direct neighbors in the network. In total we report on 113 human subjects experiments, highlighting the speed, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness of webbased experiments over those conducted in physical labs.

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Section: Testing For Effects Of Network Structurementioning

confidence: 83%

Cooperation and contagion in web-based, networked public goods experiments

2011

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“…In our experiment it was thereby impossible to use (theoretically superior) strategies that make use of second-order information, such as the reputations of subjects that were refused help by a recipient (e.g. the 'standing' strategy [19][20][21]). It seems plausible that insight in secondorder information will influence helping behaviour: subjects might forgive a refusal to help more easily when they themselves refused help to a recipient before (but see [22]).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Personal experience and reputation interact in human decisions to help reciprocally

2013

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There is ample evidence that human cooperative behaviour towards other individuals is often conditioned on information about previous interactions. This information derives both from personal experience (direct reciprocity) and from experience of others (i.e. reputation; indirect reciprocity). Direct and indirect reciprocity have been studied separately, but humans often have access to both types of information. Here, we experimentally investigate information use in a repeated helping game. When acting as donor, subjects can condition their decisions to help recipients with both types of information at a small cost to access such information. We find that information from direct interactions weighs more heavily in decisions to help, and participants tend to react less forgivingly to negative personal experience than to negative reputation. Moreover, effects of personal experience and reputation interact in decisions to help. If a recipient's reputation is positive, the personal experience of the donor has a weak effect on the decision to help, and vice versa. Yet if the two types of information indicate conflicting signatures of helpfulness, most decisions to help follow personal experience. To understand the roles of direct and indirect reciprocity in human cooperation, they should be studied in concert, not in isolation.

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“…A problem of utmost importance is that while an individual can benefit from mutual cooperation, it can often do even better by exploiting the cooperative efforts of others (and this, in turn, tends to destroy cooperation) [2]. Evolutionary game theory has proved to be a major formalization tool in this context, so different games have been used in many theoretical and experimental works, and the subject has rapidly jumped to other domains such as statistical physics and mathematics [3][4][5][6][7]. In order to model biological systems and human behavior [1,2], the prisoner's dilemma (PD) game has become especially well known and studied because in this game the best strategy for single players becomes the worst one for the community (see below).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of punishment in a mobile population playing the prisoner's dilemma game

Amor

Fort

2011

Phys. Rev. E

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We deal with a system of prisoner's dilemma players undergoing continuous motion in a two-dimensional plane. In contrast to previous work, we introduce altruistic punishment after the game. We find punishing only a few of the cooperator-defector interactions is enough to lead the system to a cooperative state in environments where otherwise defection would take over the population. This happens even with soft nonsocial punishment (where both cooperators and defectors punish other players, a behavior observed in many human populations). For high enough mobilities or temptations to defect, low rates of social punishment can no longer avoid the breakdown of cooperation.

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Indirect Punishment and Generosity Toward Strangers

Cited by 123 publications

References 27 publications

Cooperation and contagion in web-based, networked public goods experiments

Cooperation and contagion in web-based, networked public goods experiments

Personal experience and reputation interact in human decisions to help reciprocally

Effects of punishment in a mobile population playing the prisoner's dilemma game

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