Some punishment in public goods games is retributive justice-seeking, not cooperation enforcement.
Evidence
In a replication (see supplementary material of Johnson et al. 2009), participants also had the opportunity to pay in order to help others and the results were nearly identical. Participants who, in the random income game, reduced the income of high earners or increased that of low earners were more likely to punish low contributors in the PGG. These two studies are consistent with the fairness interpretation of punishment. At least some cases of punishment in PGGs are better explained in terms of retribution than in terms of support to cooperation. — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality, 185
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to the chapter’s larger framing of religion as partner-choice enforcement — punishment as fairness/retribution parallels how moral systems get policed. — connects to: Punishment scales with the unfairness of the wrongdoing, not with deterrence needs — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality: The…, 103; A punisher’s own gains do not reduce punishment of unrelated violators. — Ernst Fehr, Third-Party Punishment and Social Norms, 109; Some cultures punish cooperators rather than freeriders in economic games — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 831 (+3 more)
Related
- People punish free-riders partly to correct inequality, not only to enforce cooperation. (similarity 0.87)
- Some cultures punish cooperators rather than freeriders in economic games (similarity 0.85)
- Punishing high contributors can erase the cooperative benefits of punishment. (similarity 0.85)
- Stranger-based game experiments miss most real moral contexts. (similarity 0.82)
- Punishment scales with the unfairness of the wrongdoing, not with deterrence needs (similarity 0.81)
- A punisher’s own gains do not reduce punishment of unrelated violators. (similarity 0.80)
- Costly punishment sustains cooperation that otherwise decays over repeated rounds. (similarity 0.79)
- People spend their own money to punish and reward strangers with no future benefit. (similarity 0.78)
Broader Connections
- A punisher’s own gains do not reduce punishment of unrelated violators.
#expands(0.80) — Ernst Fehr, Third-Party Punishment and Social Norms, 109 - Some cultures punish cooperators rather than freeriders in economic games
#expands(0.75) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 831 - Third-party punishment renders defection in a one-shot dyadic exchange unprofitable.
#contradicts(0.75) — Ernst Fehr, Third-Party Punishment and Social Norms, 117 - Fairness is not reducible to mutualistic partner choice.
#expands(0.75) — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality, 567 - Punishment follows politics, corporate profit, and media, not crime itself
#expands(0.70) — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 295