Indirect Punishment and Generosity Toward Strangers

Cheaper Cooperation In the context of public goods games in which optimal benefit is achieved when all participants contribute, bad behavior cannot always be deterred by direct punishment, and has the added disadvantage that the punisher may suffer a cost. Alternatively, instead of punishment, rewarding those who contribute can be effective in encouraging and maintaining widespread cooperation, with the added plus that group benefits are not diminished by the costs of punishment. But Ule et al. (p. 1701 ) discovered experimentally that if someone is treated depending on how they have behaved in previous interactions, retaining the option to occasionally apply punishment shifts the payouts to favor cooperators more than defectors.