Altruistic punishment does not increase with the severity of norm violations in the field

Loukas Balafoutas, Nikos Nikiforakis and Bettina Rockenbach ()
Additional contact information
Nikos Nikiforakis: New York University Abu Dhabi
Bettina Rockenbach: University of Cologne

Nature Communications, 2016, vol. 7, issue 1, 1-6

Abstract: Abstract The degree of human cooperation among strangers is a major evolutionary puzzle. A prominent explanation is that cooperation is maintained because many individuals have a predisposition to punish those violating group-beneficial norms. A critical condition for cooperation to evolve in evolutionary models is that punishment increases with the severity of the violation. Here we present evidence from a field experiment with real-life interactions that, unlike in lab experiments, altruistic punishment does not increase with the severity of the violation, regardless of whether it is direct (confronting a violator) or indirect (withholding help). We also document growing concerns for counter-punishment as the severity of the violation increases, indicating that the marginal cost of direct punishment increases with the severity of violations. The evidence suggests that altruistic punishment may not provide appropriate incentives to deter large violations. Our findings thus offer a rationale for the emergence of formal institutions for promoting large-scale cooperation among strangers.

Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (20)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms13327 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
Working Paper: Altruistic punishment does not increase with the severity of norm violations in the field (2016)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:7:y:2016:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms13327

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms13327

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().