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. 2014 Nov 11;111(45):15924-7.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.1413170111. Epub 2014 Oct 27.

Direct and indirect punishment among strangers in the field

Loukas Balafoutas  1 , Nikos Nikiforakis  2 , Bettina Rockenbach  3
Affiliations

Direct and indirect punishment among strangers in the field

Loukas Balafoutas et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. .

Abstract

Many interactions in modern human societies are among strangers. Explaining cooperation in such interactions is challenging. The two most prominent explanations critically depend on individuals' willingness to punish defectors: In models of direct punishment, individuals punish antisocial behavior at a personal cost, whereas in models of indirect reciprocity, they punish indirectly by withholding rewards. We investigate these competing explanations in a field experiment with real-life interactions among strangers. We find clear evidence of both direct and indirect punishment. Direct punishment is not rewarded by strangers and, in line with models of indirect reciprocity, is crowded out by indirect punishment opportunities. The existence of direct and indirect punishment in daily life indicates the importance of both means for understanding the evolution of cooperation.

Keywords: cooperation; field experiment; indirect reciprocity; punishment; social norms.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Helping rates by treatment. Help is offered more frequently in treatment BaseHelp than in HelpViolator, indicating that observers apply indirect punishment of norm violators by means of withholding help. Helping rates in HelpPunisher are not significantly different from treatment BaseHelp (i.e., no reward is given to punishers). Error bars indicate 95% confidence intervals. See main text for statistics.
Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.
Direct punishment rates by treatment. Direct punishment of norm violators is much more frequent in treatment BasePun than in treatment HelpViolator, in which observers also could punish indirectly. This is evidence that indirect punishment opportunities crowd out direct punishment. Error bars indicate 95% confidence intervals. See main text for statistics.
Fig. 3.
Fig. 3.
Direct and indirect punishment by violator's sex. The first two bars on the left show that direct punishment is much more likely to be used against women (pink bar) than against men (blue bar). This pattern is reversed for indirect punishment, defined as the difference in helping rates between treatments BaseHelp and HelpViolator (third and fourth bars in the figure). This difference is larger for men (blue bar) than for women (pink bar). See main text for statistics.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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