Many people cooperate conditionally and punish defectors at their own expense, even with no prospect of future benefit.
The claim goes beyond self-interest with a long shadow of the future: strong reciprocators act the same way in one-shot anonymous settings where reputation cannot pay. Gintis and collaborators argued this is a stable human type rather than an error, and the counter-argument is that a subject in a laboratory has no way to switch off habits built for repeated life.
In practice
- A departing employee spends her last week documenting handovers she will never benefit from.
- A customer who will not return still leaves the review that warns the next one.
- Possible explanations
- The explanation is a disposition to cooperate conditionally and to punish defection at personal cost, which would have been favoured where groups with such members outcompeted groups without them.
- In its favour
- The laboratory results are robust and repeated across societies, with punishment of defectors occurring in one-shot anonymous settings where reputation cannot pay.
- Against it
- Critics argue the results reflect everyday heuristics misapplied to an artificial setting rather than a distinct disposition, and that framing and experimenter presence account for much of the punishment observed.
- Standing
- Contested. Critics argue the laboratory results reflect misapplied everyday heuristics or experimental framing rather than a distinct disposition, and that the field evidence is thinner than the lab evidence.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Games & Strategic Interaction
- Essay
- The recurring shapes of conflict and cooperation