Is Cooperation Promoted by Punishment?
Communities develop social norms, for right or wrong reasons. Some of these norms can be in favor of promoting or contributing to the public good. Punishments for violating these social norms are an incentive for people to cooperate towards contributing to the public good.
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Punishments often develop as a means of social norm enforcement in order to promote cooperation. Of course this is not the only reason punishments are developed and they can be used to coerce people into conformity through threats. The appearance and illusion of "good" can be used to influence public compliance despite outliers who see past the illusion. But that's not what this post is about -- I have talked about that aspect of the falsity we are surrounded by in many previous posts.
Perspectives on Psychological Science published a paper in 2013 in which they wanted to know how low- or high-trust societies were affected by punishments to incentivize contributions towards the public good. 83 studies from 18 societies were used to develop this meta-analysis. The conclusion was evident that punishment promotes cooperation more in high-trust societies compared to low-trust.
Public good dilemmas are used to demonstrate how participants contribute to a public good. These studies have been used to try to determine how groups deal with "free riders" and how to get group members to contribute. Trust levels are established by asking people if they generally trust others or if they need to be careful. This sets a level of trust people have in a society overall.
In high-trust societies like Denmark and the Netherlands, punishment works to promote cooperation in the public good, contrary to low-trusting South Africa or Turkey where punishment doesn't work effectively. These high-trust societies view punishment for violating social norms of what is "good for everyone" as an effective way to enforce cooperation in the society. Others are encouraged to follow the norms or else face the consequences. This justification can be applied to free-riding on public transportation, making too much noise in a neighborhood, or even taxes.
When a group accepts norms, and accepts the justification to enforce those norms through formal punishment of some kind, then the members become more willing to informally enforce cooperative norms because the overall group does. Non-conformity to what a group perceived rightly or wrongly as "good" will result in negative feedback, such as social rejection and loss of cooperative survivability at the peer level, and even imprisonment at the governance level. This conformity and trust to the social norms, along with the fear of punishment, act as a self-enforcement in us and results in less external norm enforcement being applied in a society.
Two studies used an experiment where participants in a small group were given 10 units of money, and first had to decide to contribute to the group fund (public good) or free ride on other's contributors. The group fund was multiplied by 1.5x and equally distributed to all group members. The second part of the experiment was to reveal everyone's decision to the group. Then everyone gets to decide if they want to pay a small amount to punish the non-cooperating member of the group by paying 1 monetary unit to reduce the other by 3 monetary units. Then people are told if there were punished and how much they earned. Then the trial is repeated. There is also a control group with no punishment being dished out.
Different studies show different outcomes based on the level of trust throughout the society. Where trust is greater, the contributions to the public good increased more over time with punishments present as opposed to not having punishments present.
People in a trusted group trust each other to comply with the group norms, and accept the enforcement of punishments to achieve compliance with those norms. Trust, punishment and cooperation seem to be linked to explain how some societies prosper in stability and growth, while others don't.
The findings of the meta-analysis suggest that trust and cooperation are the social capital that forms large-scale societies and "makes the world go round". Large organizations seem to be founded on the stabilizing effect of trust and cooperation that forms in earlier social development of the community. That base of trust is the ground that leads to more construction being possible within a group. Informal enforcement of norms develops in small groups and carries on as things get more complex where often formal legal punishments get established.
Norms, rules, codes of conduct, laws, etc. are always a part of a community or society, for right or wrong. We develop them through our cooperative interactions. Objective understanding of how actions affect others can be discerned through cooperative interaction. Morality can be known apart from the legal fabrications or corrupted cultures that surround humanity and condition us to accept falsity.
Thank you for your time and attention! I appreciate the knowledge reaching more people. Take care. Peace.
References:
- Punishment promotes human cooperation when people trust each other
- Trust, Punishment, and Cooperation Across 18 Societies: A Meta-Analysis
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2017-03-23, 11:50am
Growing up in Denmark-- one of the "high trust" societies-- I will say that it was interestingly different from living in the US, notably in the sense that there was a much greater respect for the concept of "a common good," as opposed to the more individualistic orientation found in this country. The common good is considered important to the point that it is more accepted that a person may not get what they want if/when the common interest is at stake.
On the whole, though, I would say part of the reason it works is as much because there are benefits/rewards for doing right more than "punishments" for doing wrong.
Indeed, positive reinforcement works better than negative. Thanks for the geographical feedback as well ;)
I remember I read an amazing article in the early '80s in Scientific American. It reported an experiment that later became famous in the Game Theory. It was the Robert Axelrod's tournament for trade algoritms. You can read about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evolution_of_Cooperation#Axelrod.27s_tournaments
Shortly, the best strategy for trading was;
The name of that strategy was TIT-FOR-TAT. The experiment showed what Robert Trivers theorized: reciprocal altruism is a win-win strategy that creates social development even in untrusted groups.
Of course, this theory doesn't talk about power relations.
I would have to agree. Thanks for the summary, I will check it out more! 21st century economics in the West wants to support unfair things, like failing companies and bail them out for being too-big-to-fail hehe.
I remember Tit-for-Tat from college psychology... the beauty of it was that-- across multiple applications-- the outcome was reliably positive, on the balance.
and the funny thing was that Tit-For-Tat won every time the tournamente even if it was the simplest of all those algorithms. :)
btw, I was young and found that impressive.
Nice post @krnel.. I have long not see you. after the last time we chat
Thanks ;)
@krnel success for you, thanks to your input at the time and were able to pass through the storm
Very interesting as always, thanks.
Indeed it is, I wish more people would read it to understand how social dynamics develop ;) hehe.
Hello. Great post. What is a Steem Witness ? What does it involve to support by voting at the bottom of the Witness page ? What is the Witness page ? Thank you very much to help me understand :)
You can read my witness declaration in the first link: https://steemit.com/witness-category/@krnel/krnel-s-declaration-of-witness
That explains some of it. You vote to vote-in witnesses and get them a better spot in the list. The witness page is where you can see who is in what witness position.
Thank you. +1 ;)
Always a rewarding read. I'm reminded of the way whales and dolphins raise their young. As I understand it, the mother only rewards good behavior while ignoring negativity.
Interesting content, useful to reflect upon some dynamics ;)