Dispositional free riders do not free ride on punishment

Abstract

Strong reciprocity explains prosocial cooperation by the presence of individuals who incur costs to help those who helped them ('strong positive reciprocity') and to punish those who wronged them ('strong negative reciprocity'). Theories of social preferences predict that in contrast to 'strong reciprocators', self-regarding people cooperate and punish only if there are sufficient future benefits. Here, we test this prediction in a two-stage design. First, participants are classified according to their disposition towards strong positive reciprocity as either dispositional conditional cooperators (DCC) or dispositional free riders (DFR). Participants then play a one-shot public goods game, either with or without punishment. As expected, DFR cooperate only when punishment is possible, whereas DCC cooperate without punishment. Surprisingly, dispositions towards strong positive reciprocity are unrelated to strong negative reciprocity: punishment by DCC and DFR is practically identical. The 'burden of cooperation' is thus carried by a larger set of individuals than previously assumed.

Fig. 1

Contribution and prosocial punishment behaviour of DCC and DFR. a Contributions and beliefs in the without punishment treatment (N_DCC = 41; N_DFR = 27). Asterisks refer to Mann–Whitney/Wilcoxon signed-rank tests; n.s. P ≥ 0.10; **P < 0.05; ***P < 0.01. b Contributions and beliefs in the with punishment treatment (N_DCC = 49; N_DFR = 22). Asterisks refer to Mann–Whitney/Wilcoxon signed-rank tests; n.s. P ≥ 0.10; *P < 0.10; ***P < 0.01. c Average expenditure on prosocial punishment. n.s. P > 0.10; Mann–Whitney test. d Proportion of punishers engaged in prosocial punishment. n.s. P > 0.10; χ² test. The error bars indicate ± 1 SEM

Fig. 2

Self-reported anger levels depend on the deviation from the own contribution. Participants indicated the intensity of anger on a scale from 1 (not at all) to 7 (very much). The size of the bubbles corresponds to the number of observations at this location. The lines indicate the locally weighted regression functions of DCC (dark blue) and DFR (orange), and are very similar for both types. In both treatments, DCC and DFR feel angrier as group member’s negative deviations from the own contribution are higher

Fig. 3

Prosocial punishment behaviour of DCC and DFR in the 3:1 punishment ratio condition and the 1:1 punishment ratio condition. a Average expenditure of DCC and DFR on prosocial punishment in the 3:1 punishment ratio condition (N_DCC = 77; N_DFR = 35); Mann–Whitney test, n.s. P > 0.10. b Share of DCC and DFR engaging in prosocial punishment in the 3:1 punishment ratio condition; n.s. P > 0.10, χ² test. c The average expenditure of DCC and DFR on prosocial punishment in the 1:1 punishment ratio condition (N_DCC = 74; N_DFR = 41); n.s. P > 0.10, Mann–Whitney test. d Share of DCC and DFR engaging in prosocial punishment in the 1:1 punishment ratio condition; n.s. P > 0.10, χ² test. The error bars indicate ± 1 SEM

Fig. 4

Self-reported anger increases for a negative deviation of others, independent of the punishment ratio or the individual cooperative disposition. The emotional reaction of DCC is similar to that of DFR in the 3:1 and 1:1 punishment ratio condition. The size of the bubbles corresponds to the number of observations at this location. The lines indicate the locally weighted regression functions for DCC (dark blue) and DFR (orange)