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Antisocial Punishment Across Societies
Abstract
We document the widespread existence of antisocial punishment, that is, the sanctioning of people who behave prosocially. Our evidence comes from public goods experiments that we conducted in 16 comparable participant pools around the world. However, there is a huge cross-societal variation. Some participant pools punished the high contributors as much as they punished the low contributors, whereas in others people only punished low contributors. In some participant pools, antisocial punishment was strong enough to remove the cooperation-enhancing effect of punishment. We also show that weak norms of civic cooperation and the weakness of the rule of law in a country are significant predictors of antisocial punishment. Our results show that punishment opportunities are socially beneficial only if complemented by strong social norms of cooperation.
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“As we will show later on in this section, these parameters allow us to reproduce the broad trend observed in PGG experiments2.”
From Cooperation without punishment (2023) · cites this paper as [2]
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“As can be seen, regardless of the initial cooperation level, cooperation declines over 20 generations, resembling behavioural regularities observed in repeated public goods games2.”
From Cooperation without punishment (2023) · cites this paper as [2]
In the citing paper
“First, they reduce the overall social good2,3,6.”
From Cooperation without punishment (2023) · cites this paper as [2]
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- All authors contributed equally to this work. The authors thank various workshop audiences in particular the Arts and Humanities Research Council workshops Culture and the Mind in Sheffield and I. Bohnet R. Boyd S. Burks E. Fehr U. Fischbacher D. Gambetta H. Gintis G. Grimalda J. Henrich P. Richerson B. Rockenbach R. Sapolsky and R. Zeckhauser for helpful discussions. We are grateful for financial support from the University of Nottingham the Grundlagenforschungsfonds at the University of St. Gallen the Latsis Foundation (Geneva) and the EU-TMR Research Network ENDEAR (FMRX-CT98-0238). This paper is part of the MacArthur Foundation Network on Economic Environments and the Evolution of Individual Preferences and Social Norms.
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Metadata
- Authors
- Herrmann, B., Thöni, C., & Gächter, S.
- Affiliations
- University of Nottingham (GB)
- Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, University of Nottingham, School of Economics, Sir Clive Granger Building, University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK.
- ORCID
- Herrmann, Benedikt
- Venue
- Science
- Published
- 2008-03-07
- Volume
- 319
- Issue
- 5868
- Pages
- 1362-1367
- ISSN
- 0036-8075 (ISSN-L)
- 1095-9203
- OpenAlex
- W2137709071
- Cited by
- 2,038
- References
- 38
- Citations by year
- 2026: 52 · 2025: 101 · 2024: 120 · 2023: 129 · 2022: 126 · 2021: 129 · 2020: 108 · 2019: 127 · 2018: 100 · 2017: 127 · 2016: 112 · 2015: 142 · 2014: 140 · 2013: 124 · 2012: 118
- FWCI
- 264.56
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Science (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Alexandria (UniSG) (University of St.Gallen) (acceptedVersion)
- Digital Commons - USU (Utah State University) (submittedVersion)
- Alexandria (UniSG) (University of St.Gallen) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social Power and Status Dynamics
- Keywords
- antisocial punishment, prosocial behavior, public goods game, cross-cultural variation, cooperation, rule of law, social norms
- MeSH terms
- Cooperative Behavior, Cross-Cultural Comparison, Emotions, Games, Experimental, Humans, Punishment, Regression Analysis, Social Behavior, Social Control, Formal
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