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Cited by 725

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 8 of the 8 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Via Freedom to Coercion: The Emergence of Costly Punishment

Open access
Hauert, Christoph, Traulsen, Arne, Brandt, Hannelore, Nowak, Martin A., Sigmund, Karl·2007·Science

Abstract

In human societies, cooperative behavior in joint enterprises is often enforced through institutions that impose sanctions on defectors. Many experiments on so-called public goods games have shown that in the absence of such institutions, individuals are willing to punish defectors, even at a cost to themselves. Theoretical models confirm that social norms prescribing the punishment of uncooperative behavior are stable—once established, they prevent dissident minorities from spreading. But how can such costly punishing behavior gain a foothold in the population? A surprisingly simple model shows that if individuals have the option to stand aside and abstain from the joint endeavor, this paves the way for the emergence and establishment of cooperative behavior based on the punishment of defectors. Paradoxically, the freedom to withdraw from the common enterprise leads to enforcement of social norms. Joint enterprises that are compulsory rather than voluntary are less likely to lead to cooperation.

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Crossref · 10.1126/science.1141588

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Metadata

Authors
Hauert, C., Traulsen, A., Brandt, H., Nowak, M. A., & Sigmund, K.
Venue
Science
Published
2007-06-29
Volume
316
Issue
5833
Pages
1905-1907
ISSN
  • 0036-8075 (ISSN-L)
  • 1095-9203
OpenAlex
W2120607076
Cited by
725
References
8
FWCI
139.99
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
green

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Via Freedom to Coercion: The Emergence of Costly Punishment. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1126/science.1141588
The paper
Hauert, C., Traulsen, A., Brandt, H., Nowak, M. A., & Sigmund, K. (2007). Via Freedom to Coercion: The Emergence of Costly Punishment. Science. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1141588

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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.