Cited by 715Experimental Behavioral Economics StudiesEvolutionary Game Theory and CooperationGame Theory and Applications

Positive Interactions Promote Public Cooperation

Open access
Rand, David G., Dreber, Anna, Ellingsen, Tore, Fudenberg, Drew, Nowak, Martin A.·2009·Science

Abstract

Carrots Are Better Than Sticks: The challenge of dealing with freeloaders—who benefit from a common good but refuse to pay their “fair share” of the costs—has often been met in theoretical and laboratory studies by sanctioning costly punishment, in which contributors pay a portion of their benefit so that freeloaders lose theirs. Rand et al. (p. 1272 ; see the news story by Pennisi and the cover) added a private interaction session after each round of the public goods game during which participants were allowed to reward or punish other members of their group. The outcome showed that reward was as effective as punishment in maintaining a cooperative mindset, and doing so via rewarding interactions allowed the entire group to prosper because less is lost to the costs of punishing.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1126/science.1177418

Cites

41 of 41 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Several techniques, such as sanctioning defectors or rewarding cooperators, tend to increase cooperative behaviour in laboratory experiments using economic games.

    “Several techniques, such as sanctioning defectors 187 or rewarding cooperators 188 , tend to increase cooperative behaviour in laboratory experiments using economic games.”
  • An alternative mechanism to punishing free-riders is to reward cooperators.

    “Instead of punishing free-riders, an alternative mechanism is to reward cooperators53.”

    From Cooperation without punishment (2023) · cites this paper as [53]

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Research works printed but not linked: 10

  1. [6]Dal Bó P American Economic Review 95 1591 2005
  2. [9]Hardin G Science 162 1243 1968 5699198
  3. [10]Yamagishi T Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 51 110 1986
  4. [11]Ostrom E Walker J Gardner R The American Political Science Review 86 404 1992
  5. [12]Fehr E Gächter S American Economic Review 90 980 2000
  6. [19]Masclet D Noussair C Tucker S Villeval M American Economic Review 93 366 2003
  7. [21]Cinyabuguma M Page T Putterman L Journal of Public Economics 89 1421 2005
  8. [25]Nikiforakis N Journal of Public Economics 92 91 2008
  9. [27]Lowe KB Kroeck KG Sivasubramaniam N Leadership Quarterly 7 385 1996
  10. [34]Andreoni J Harbaugh WT Vesterlund L American Economic Review 93 893 2003

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Rand, D. G., Dreber, A., Ellingsen, T., Fudenberg, D., & Nowak, M. A.
Affiliations
  • Harvard University (US)
  • Stockholm School of Economics (SE)
Corresponding author
  • Rand, David G.
  • Dreber, Anna
  • Nowak, Martin A.
Venue
Science
Published
2009-09-04
Volume
325
Issue
5945
Pages
1272-1275
ISSN
  • 0036-8075 (ISSN-L)
  • 1095-9203
OpenAlex
W2121067707
Cited by
715
References
41
Citations by year
2026: 23 · 2025: 29 · 2024: 33 · 2023: 32 · 2022: 29 · 2021: 60 · 2020: 34 · 2019: 38 · 2018: 29 · 2017: 43 · 2016: 47 · 2015: 59 · 2014: 55 · 2013: 70 · 2012: 43
FWCI
116.86
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Science (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
  • RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
  • Digital Access to Scholarship at Harvard (DASH) (Harvard University) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
Funders
National Institute of General Medical Sciences (R01GM078986)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Safety Research › Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation
  • Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Management Science and Operations Research › Game Theory and Applications
Keywords
public goods game, cooperation, punishment, reward, repeated games, collective action, positive interactions, social identity, self-interested behavior
MeSH terms
Cooperative Behavior, Games, Experimental, Humans, Interpersonal Relations, Punishment, Reward

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review