Partner choice versus punishment in human Prisoner’s Dilemmas

Barclay, Pat; Raihani, Nichola

doi:10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2015.12.004

Cited by 69 publications

(70 citation statements)

References 86 publications

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“…Overall, our findings contrast sharply with reports of high levels of competition, low levels of tolerance, and harassment-induced food transfers among chimpanzees (38,55). Given that in previous studies chimpanzees did not have a free choice of partners, it may be that partner choice is an essential mechanism that is preferred over punishment to enhance cooperation (23,56). This theory is consistent with evidence that other species prefer withdrawal over punishment as an enforcement mechanism (30), and both theoretical and empirical evidence favoring partner choice over punishment in humans (1,9,(21)(22)(23)56).…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 56%

“…Given that in previous studies chimpanzees did not have a free choice of partners, it may be that partner choice is an essential mechanism that is preferred over punishment to enhance cooperation (23,56). This theory is consistent with evidence that other species prefer withdrawal over punishment as an enforcement mechanism (30), and both theoretical and empirical evidence favoring partner choice over punishment in humans (1,9,(21)(22)(23)56). The chimpanzees' preference for cooperation during this study demonstrates their ability to inhibit competition to increase long-term payoffs.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Claims of ubiquity and human uniqueness in the use of punishment may have been overstated (9), however, because evidence of these strategies in field and cross-cultural studies of humans has been mixed (18). Punishment in cooperative contexts appears to depend on the scale of the society (19) and the possibility of retribution (20), whereas alternative enforcement mechanisms, such as partner choice, may be equally important for maintaining cooperation (21)(22)(23). In theoretical models, partner choice based on simple reinforcement, choosing the partner who has benefited you in the past, can lead to a cooperative equilibrium faster than if partner choice is not allowed (24).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Humans show flexible, facultative enforcement strategies adjusted to the context, the intention or motivation of the cheater, the availability of alternative strategies, and the scope of competition (23,31). For example, humans only avoid partners that freeload if those partners cheated intentionally (32).…”

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confidence: 99%

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How chimpanzees cooperate in a competitive world

Suchak

Eppley

Campbell

et al. 2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Our species is routinely depicted as unique in its ability to achieve cooperation, whereas our closest relative, the chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes), is often characterized as overly competitive. Human cooperation is assisted by the cost attached to competitive tendencies through enforcement mechanisms, such as punishment and partner choice. To examine if chimpanzees possess the same ability to mitigate competition, we set up a cooperative task in the presence of the entire group of 11 adults, which required two or three individuals to pull jointly to receive rewards. This opengroup set-up provided ample opportunity for competition (e.g., freeloading, displacements) and aggression. Despite this unique set-up and initial competitiveness, cooperation prevailed in the end, being at least five times as common as competition. The chimpanzees performed 3,565 cooperative acts while using a variety of enforcement mechanisms to overcome competition and freeloading, as measured by (attempted) thefts of rewards. These mechanisms included direct protest by the target, third-party punishment in which dominant individuals intervened against freeloaders, and partner choice. There was a marked difference between freeloading and displacement; freeloading tended to elicit withdrawal and third-party interventions, whereas displacements were met with a higher rate of direct retaliation. Humans have shown similar responses in controlled experiments, suggesting shared mechanisms across the primates to mitigate competition for the sake of cooperation.Pan troglodytes | freeloading | enforcement | punishment | partner choice

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Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 56%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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How chimpanzees cooperate in a competitive world

Suchak

Eppley

Campbell

et al. 2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“…Since costly punishment is known to confer long-term benefits in environments where reputation is built [41,71], a large amount of recent work on partner choice has considered the formation of multiple-round partnerships and the cost of leaving such partnerships [7,26]. It is important to note that the models presented here consider partner choice in a one-shot game.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Expectations of Fairness and Trust Co-Evolve in Environments of Partial Information

Rauwolf¹,

Bryson²

2017

Dyn Games Appl

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When playing one-shot economic games, individuals often blindly trust others, accepting partnerships without any information regarding the trustworthiness of their partner. Consequently, they risk deleterious pacts. Oddly, when individuals do have information about another, they reject partnerships that are not fair, despite the fact that such offers are profitable-individuals costly punish. Why would one reject profitable partnerships on the one hand, but risk unknown offers on the other? Significant research has gone into explaining the contexts where blind trust or costly punishment provides an evolutionary advantage; however, both behaviours are rarely considered in tandem. Here we demonstrate that both behaviours can simultaneously be revenue maximizing. Further, given the plausible condition of partially obscured information and partner choice, trust mediates the generation of costly punishment. This result is important because it demonstrates that the evolutionary viability of trust, fairness, and costly punishment may be linked. The adaptive nature of fairness expectations can best be explained in concert with trust.

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Decision making in the prisoner's dilemma game: The effect of exit on cooperation and social welfare

Haesevoets

Bostyn

Folmer

et al. 2018

Behavioral Decision Making

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The prisoner's dilemma game is a mixed‐motive game that offers two players the simultaneous choice between a cooperative and a defective alternative. An often neglected aspect of such a binary‐choice game, however, is that in many real‐life encounters, people can choose not only to cooperate or defect, but they also have a third option: to exit the social dilemma. Although in the literature a consensus has emerged that the addition of an exit opportunity benefits cooperation, there is only scant research into its effect on social welfare. In order to allow a direct comparison of cooperation rates and welfare levels across binary‐choice and trinary‐choice games, in this study, we used a design in which the same participants played similar games with and without an exit option (i.e., a within‐subjects design), and this in a range of structural variations. The findings of our study indicated that the aggregated outcome of both players is generally lower in games with an exit option than in games without an exit option. Moreover, our results showed that the efficiency of the exit option strongly depends on the specific outcome structure of the game (in terms of its endowment size, (a)symmetry, and level of noncorrespondence). In the discussion, it is argued that the implementation of an exit option as a strategy to increase social welfare should be critically assessed.

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Partner choice versus punishment in human Prisoner’s Dilemmas

Cited by 69 publications

References 86 publications

How chimpanzees cooperate in a competitive world

How chimpanzees cooperate in a competitive world

Expectations of Fairness and Trust Co-Evolve in Environments of Partial Information

Decision making in the prisoner's dilemma game: The effect of exit on cooperation and social welfare

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