Cross-cultural differences in retaliation: Evidence from the soccer field

While the threat of retaliation can stabilize cooperation, retaliatory cultures have also been linked to violence and war. There is little systematic evidence for cross-cultural variation in the use and consequences of retaliation in real-life settings. Analyzing a novel data set of foul play from three seasons of nine professional men’s soccer leagues (n=230,113), I show that players from a cultural background that places a higher value on revenge are more likely to retaliate for a foul during a game but are not more likely to commit fouls overall. I find that players are more retaliatory early on in a game, consistent with the use of retaliation as a deterrent to future transgression. Retaliation is indeed found to limit repeated offenses, as long as the perpetrator’s cultural background also emphasizes retaliation. This informal conflict management interacts with formal sanctioning by the referee in several ways. Victims are less likely to retaliate if the foul was sanctioned with a yellow card, indicating a crowding out by the formal punishment mechanism. Both forms of sanction successfully reduce repeated offenses by the perpetrator of a foul, with sanctioning by a yellow card being around three times as effective as retaliation by the victim. These results provide unique evidence for cultural differences in establishing and maintaining cooperative equilibria and for the interaction of formal and informal punishment mechanisms for sustaining cooperation.