Simon Gächter

Altruistic punishment in humans

Human cooperation is an evolutionary puzzle. Unlike other creatures, people frequently cooperate with genetically unrelated strangers, often in large groups, with people they will never meet again, and when reputation gains are small or absent. These patterns of cooperation cannot be explained by the nepotistic motives associated with the evolutionary theory of kin selection and the selfish motives associated with signalling theory or the theory of reciprocal altruism. Here we show experimentally that the altruistic punishment of defectors is a key motive for the explanation of cooperation. Altruistic punishment means that individuals punish, although the punishment is costly for them and yields no material gain. We show that cooperation flourishes if altruistic punishment is possible, and breaks down if it is ruled out. The evidence indicates that negative emotions towards defectors are the proximate mechanism behind altruistic punishment. These results suggest that future study of the evolution of human cooperation should include a strong focus on explaining altruistic punishment.

Fairness And Retaliation: The Economics Of Reciprocity

This paper shows that reciprocity has powerful implications for many economic domains. It is an important determinant in the enforcement of contracts and social norms and enhances the possibilities of collective action greatly. Reciprocity may render the provision of explicit incentive inefficient because the incentives may crowd out voluntary co-operation. It strongly limits the effects to competition in markets with incomplete contracts and gives rise to noncompetitive wage differences. Finally, reciprocity it is also a strong force contributing to the existence of incomplete contracts.

Are People Conditionally Cooperative? Evidence from a Public Goods Experiment

We study the importance of conditional cooperation in a one-shot public goods game by using a variant of the strategy-method. We find that a third of the subjects can be classified as free riders, whereas 50 percent are conditional cooperators.

Antisocial Punishment Across Societies

We document the widespread existence of antisocial punishment, that is, the sanctioning of people who behave prosocially. Our evidence comes from public goods experiments that we conducted in 16 comparable participant pools around the world. However, there is a huge cross-societal variation. Some participant pools punished the high contributors as much as they punished the low contributors, whereas in others people only punished low contributors. In some participant pools, antisocial punishment was strong enough to remove the cooperation-enhancing effect of punishment. We also show that weak norms of civic cooperation and the weakness of the rule of law in a country are significant predictors of antisocial punishment. Our results show that punishment opportunities are socially beneficial only if complemented by strong social norms of cooperation.

Strong reciprocity, human cooperation, and the enforcement of social norms

This paper provides strong evidence challenging the self-interest assumption that dominates the behavioral sciences and much evolutionary thinking. The evidence indicates that many people have a tendency to voluntarily cooperate, if treated fairly, and to punish noncooperators. We call this behavioral propensity “strong reciprocity” and show empirically that it can lead to almost universal cooperation in circumstances in which purely self-interested behavior would cause a complete breakdown of cooperation. In addition, we show that people are willing to punish those who behaved unfairly towards a third person or who defected in a Prisoner’s Dilemma game with a third person. This suggests that strong reciprocity is a powerful device for the enforcement of social norms involving, for example, food sharing or collective action. Strong reciprocity cannot be rationalized as an adaptive trait by the leading evolutionary theories of human cooperation (in other words, kin selection, reciprocal altruism, indirect reciprocity, and costly signaling theory). However, multilevel selection theories of cultural evolution are consistent with strong reciprocity.

Reciprocity and economics: The economic implications of Homo Reciprocans

Abstract A large number of studies suggest that reciprocity constitutes a basic motivational drive. This paper shows that reciprocity can account for a wide range of empirical phenomena: It (1) is a powerful effort elicitation device, (2) explains why employers refuse to hire underbidders and, hence, why wages are downwardly rigid, (3) gives rise to non-compensating wage differentials and to a positive correlation between profits and wages, (4) provides a rationale for the absence of explicit financial incentives, and (5) is a key force that sustains social norms.

The Long-Run Benefits of Punishment

Experiments have shown that punishment enhances socially beneficial cooperation but that the costs of punishment outweigh the gains from cooperation. This challenges evolutionary models of altruistic cooperation and punishment, which predict that punishment will be beneficial. We compared 10- and 50-period cooperation experiments. With the longer time horizon, punishment is unambiguously beneficial.

Collective action as a social exchange

Abstract Social interactions are frequently associated with social approval. Anticipation of social sanctions may have important economic consequences, in particular in the realm of collective action and voluntary cooperation. This paper investigates the impact and the limitations of social rewards on people’s behavior in the provision of a public good. We examine whether the opportunity to receive social approval in exchange for participation in collective actions is capable of overcome free-riding. We find that approval incentives alone are not sufficiently strong to cause a reduction in free-riding. However, in combination with some minimal social familiarity approval incentives generate a significant rise in cooperation. Our results also suggest that approval incentives give rise to multiple equilibria.

Reputation and Reciprocity: Consequences for the Labour Relation

Recent evidence highlights the importance of social norms in many economic relations. Many of these relationships are long-term and provide repeated game incentives for performance. We experimentally investigate interaction effects of reciprocity and repeated game incentives in two treatments (one-shot and repeated) of a gift-exchange game. In both treatments we observe reciprocity, which is strengthened in the repeated game. A detailed analysis shows that in the repeated game some subjects imitate reciprocity. Thus, reciprocity and repeated game incentives reinforce each other. Observed behaviour is robust against experience. We conclude that a long-term interaction is a ‘reciprocity-compatible’ contract enforcement device.

Reciprocity, culture and human cooperation: previous insights and a new cross-cultural experiment

Understanding the proximate and ultimate sources of human cooperation is a fundamental issue in all behavioural sciences. In this paper, we review the experimental evidence on how people solve cooperation problems. Existing studies show without doubt that direct and indirect reciprocity are important determinants of successful cooperation. We also discuss the insights from a large literature on the role of peer punishment in sustaining cooperation. The experiments demonstrate that many people are ‘strong reciprocators’ who are willing to cooperate and punish others even if there are no gains from future cooperation or any other reputational gains. We document this in new one-shot experiments, which we conducted in four cities in Russia and Switzerland. Our cross-cultural approach allows us furthermore to investigate how the cultural background influences strong reciprocity. Our results show that culture has a strong influence on positive and in especially strong negative reciprocity. In particular, we find large cross-cultural differences in ‘antisocial punishment’ of pro-social cooperators. Further cross-cultural research and experiments involving different socio-demographic groups document that the antisocial punishment is much more widespread than previously assumed. Understanding antisocial punishment is an important task for future research because antisocial punishment is a strong inhibitor of cooperation.