Why Sanction? Functional Causes of Punishment and Reward

Abstract

Many disciplines find it puzzling that costly cooperation exists within groups of non-kin. Cooperation can be sustained when non-cooperators are punished or when cooperators are rewarded, but these sanctions are themselves costly to provide. As such, we must ask: what forces maintain the existence of sanctioning? Why do people possess a psychology that includes punitive sentiment and a willingness to reward? Many theoretical models rely on "second-order punishment", which means that people will punish those who do not punish non-cooperators. However, our review of the evidence suggests that people do not readily do this, and do not particularly like punishers. This calls into question any theories that rely on this second-order punishment. By contrast, people will readily reward those who reward cooperators, which suggests that rewards may function as part of a system of indirect reciprocity where cooperators (and rewarders) are seen as "good" thus worthy of help. So what does sustain punitive sentiment? Punishment may function to signal qualities of the punisher that are otherwise difficult to observe, such as the punisher's trustworthiness or willingness to retaliate against personal affronts. Alternately, punishment may simply be a "Volunteer's Dilemma" where it becomes rational to "volunteer" to punish non-cooperators if no one else in the group will. Finally, we discuss how positive and negative sanctions may function differently to maintain large-scale human cooperation, depending on the proportion of cooperators in a population and the necessity for unanimous cooperation.

Signaling benefits of partner choice decisions.

“…Thus, it appears that, although choosing willing partners leads to reputational and cooperative benefits, it may not lead to immediate material benefits. This finding aligns with some research on third-party punishment, which has shown that those who punish are seen as more moral and are trusted with money more often (Barclay, 2006; Nelissen, 2008; Horita, 2010), but they are not always rewarded more or given more money in the DG (e.g., Horita, 2010; but see Raihani & Bshary, 2015; see discussion in Barclay & Kiyonari, 2014).…”

Croatian co-operatives’ story of revival: overcoming internal obstacles

“…Thus the question of who will monitor and sanction "free riders of higher orders", i.e. those who do not monitor and sanction "free riders of lower orders", recurs again and again and ultimately leads to infinite regress (Barclay and Kiyonari, 2014). Apart from such feasibility problems, policing is also largely incompatible with the spirit of cooperativeness itself, particularly with its principles of voluntary and open membership, and democratic member control (ICA, 2019;Novkovic, 2008;Jussila, 2013).…”

Economic Incentives or Communication: How Different Are their Effects on Trust

“…One explanation is that rewards and sanction systems reduce the attractiveness of opportunism, due to penalties provided to non-cooperative behavior. Another explanation is the indirect effect on expectations regarding other's choices, since the existence of penalties for defection assures that others will not exploit cooperators Barclay & Kiyonari, 2014;Tenbrunsel & Messick, 1999).…”