Group members punish free riders by withholding pairwise help from them.

Evidence

Players might have withheld help in the pairwise indirect reciprocity game from players who had refused to give in the preceding public goods round. The probability of receiving no' in the indirect reciprocity game was signi®cantly higher for players that had refused to give in the preceding public goods round than for those who had given (Fig. 2a). Similarly, we found a positive correlation between the probability of receiving no’ in the ®rst round of the indirect reciprocity game and the rate of refused help during the block of eight rounds of the public goods game — Hans-Jürge, Reputation helps solve the `tragedy of…, 18

Categorization

• XREF: Exactly the micro-behavior mechanism the reader theorizes for the Ellen farewell dinner: collective sanction executed through withheld micro-attention/approval, plus Milinski’s reputation as capital. — connects to: Mafia families punish members who poach fellow members’ clients.; Impartial third parties punish norm violators at personal cost. — Ernst Fehr, Third-Party Punishment and Social Norms, 29
• ADDENDUM: Directly supports ‘On Sacrifice: The Real Kind, with Corpses’ as an analogue — social exile through withheld reciprocity is the non-violent cousin of ritual sanction in stratified groups.

Related

• Withholding help naturally damages reputation without any formal punishment rule. (similarity 0.82)

Broader Connections

• Mafia families punish members who poach fellow members’ clients. #exemplifies (0.85)
• Impartial third parties punish norm violators at personal cost. #corroborates (0.78) — Ernst Fehr, Third-Party Punishment and Social Norms, 29