Reward and punishment
Open accessAbstract
Minigames capturing the essence of Public Goods experiments show that even in the absence of rationality assumptions, both punishment and reward will fail to bring about prosocial behavior. This result holds in particular for the well-known Ultimatum Game, which emerges as a special case. But reputation can induce fairness and cooperation in populations adapting through learning or imitation. Indeed, the inclusion of reputation effects in the corresponding dynamical models leads to the evolution of economically productive behavior, with agents contributing to the public good and either punishing those who do not or rewarding those who do. Reward and punishment correspond to two types of bifurcation with intriguing complementarity. The analysis suggests that reputation is essential for fostering social behavior among selfish agents, and that it is considerably more effective with punishment than with reward.
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A more sophisticated assessment rule should distinguish between justified and unjustified defection, taking into account the score of the receiver.
“A more sophisticated assessment rule should distinguish between justified and unjustified defection, and thus take into account the score of the receiver: someone withholding help from a 'bad' player should not pay with a reduced score 35,38,39,47 .”
From Evolution of indirect reciprocity (2005) · cites this paper as [47]
In “Bifurcation Through Reputation” (page unavailable), the paper models cooperators defecting against known nonpunishers, so a coplayer’s reputation can affect the decision to help. It does not describe an assessment rule that distinguishes justified from unjustified defection or say that withholding help from a bad player leaves the donor’s score unchanged. (LLM, conf=0.78)
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Cites
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Cited by
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- Authors
- Sigmund, K., Hauert, C., & Nowak, M. A.
- Affiliations
- University of Vienna (AT)
- Corresponding author
- Nowak, Martin A.
- Venue
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Publisher
- National Academy of Sciences
- Published
- 2001-09-11
- Volume
- 98
- Issue
- 19
- Pages
- 10757-10762
- ISSN
- 0027-8424 (ISSN-L)
- 1091-6490
- PMC
- PMC58548
- OpenAlex
- W2171043258
- Cited by
- 644
- References
- 1
- Citations by year
- 2026: 22 · 2025: 33 · 2024: 34 · 2023: 35 · 2022: 27 · 2021: 34 · 2020: 29 · 2019: 29 · 2018: 33 · 2017: 35 · 2016: 28 · 2015: 43 · 2014: 41 · 2013: 25 · 2012: 22
- FWCI
- 38.58
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- europepmc.org
- Locations
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- IIASA PURE (International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Management Science and Operations Research › Game Theory and Applications
- Keywords
- public goods, punishment, reward, reputation, ultimatum game, prosocial behavior, cooperation, evolutionary dynamics, bifurcation, fairness, social behavior
- MeSH terms
- Behavior, Humans, Models, Economic
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