Coordinated Punishment of Defectors Sustains Cooperation and Can Proliferate When Rare

被引:395
作者
Boyd, Robert [1 ,2 ]
Gintis, Herbert [2 ,3 ,4 ]
Bowles, Samuel [2 ,5 ]
机构
[1] Univ Calif Los Angeles, Dept Anthropol, Los Angeles, CA 90064 USA
[2] Santa Fe Inst, Behav Sci Program, Santa Fe, NM 87501 USA
[3] Cent European Univ, Dept Econ, H-1051 Budapest, Hungary
[4] Coll Budapest, H-1014 Budapest, Hungary
[5] Univ Siena, Dept Econ, I-53100 Siena, Italy
基金
美国国家科学基金会;
关键词
ALTRUISTIC PUNISHMENT; STRONG RECIPROCITY; SIZABLE GROUPS; EVOLUTION; ENFORCEMENT; DOMINANCE; BEHAVIOR; HUMANS;
D O I
10.1126/science.1183665
中图分类号
O [数理科学和化学]; P [天文学、地球科学]; Q [生物科学]; N [自然科学总论];
学科分类号
07 ; 0710 ; 09 ;
摘要
Because mutually beneficial cooperation may unravel unless most members of a group contribute, people often gang up on free-riders, punishing them when this is cost-effective in sustaining cooperation. In contrast, current models of the evolution of cooperation assume that punishment is uncoordinated and unconditional. These models have difficulty explaining the evolutionary emergence of punishment because rare unconditional punishers bear substantial costs and hence are eliminated. Moreover, in human behavioral experiments in which punishment is uncoordinated, the sum of costs to punishers and their targets often exceeds the benefits of the increased cooperation that results from the punishment of free-riders. As a result, cooperation sustained by punishment may actually reduce the average payoffs of group members in comparison with groups in which punishment of free-riders is not an option. Here, we present a model of coordinated punishment that is calibrated for ancestral human conditions and captures a further aspect of reality missing from both models and experiments: The total cost of punishing a free-rider declines as the number of punishers increases. We show that punishment can proliferate when rare, and when it does, it enhances group-average payoffs.
引用
收藏
页码:617 / 620
页数:4
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