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Punish and Voice: Punishment Enhances Cooperation when Combined with Norm-Signalling

Author

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  • Giulia Andrighetto
  • Jordi Brandts
  • Rosaria Conte
  • Jordi Sabater-Mir
  • Hector Solaz
  • Daniel Villatoro

Abstract

Material punishment has been suggested to play a key role in sustaining human cooperation. Experimental findings, however, show that inflicting mere material costs does not always increase cooperation and may even have detrimental effects. Indeed, ethnographic evidence suggests that the most typical punishing strategies in human ecologies (e.g., gossip, derision, blame and criticism) naturally combine normative information with material punishment. Using laboratory experiments with humans, we show that the interaction of norm communication and material punishment leads to higher and more stable cooperation at a lower cost for the group than when used separately. In this work, we argue and provide experimental evidence that successful human cooperation is the outcome of the interaction between instrumental decision-making and the norm psychology humans are provided with. Norm psychology is a cognitive machinery to detect and reason upon norms that is characterized by a salience mechanism devoted to track how much a norm is prominent within a group. We test our hypothesis both in the laboratory and with an agent-based model. The agent-based model incorporates fundamental aspects of norm psychology absent from previous work. The combination of these methods allows us to provide an explanation for the proximate mechanisms behind the observed cooperative behaviour. The consistency between the two sources of data supports our hypothesis that cooperation is a product of norm psychology solicited by norm-signalling and coercive devices.

Suggested Citation

  • Giulia Andrighetto & Jordi Brandts & Rosaria Conte & Jordi Sabater-Mir & Hector Solaz & Daniel Villatoro, 2013. "Punish and Voice: Punishment Enhances Cooperation when Combined with Norm-Signalling," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(6), pages 1-8, June.
  • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0064941
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0064941
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Martinez-Felip, Daniel & Schilizzi, Steven G.M. & Nguyen, Chi, 2025. "How does experienced behavior change normative expectations regarding socially beneficial actions?," SocArXiv vy6z2_v2, Center for Open Science.

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