People pay costs to punish norm violations that did not harm them, which sustains cooperation that direct reciprocity cannot reach.
Fehr and Fischbacher's 2004 experiments gave observers the option to spend their own money reducing the payoff of someone who had treated a third party unfairly. A substantial share did. The finding matters because reciprocity between the parties involved cannot explain cooperation among strangers, and disinterested punishment can.
In practice
- A colleague who reports a rule breach that cost him nothing and may cost him standing is the mechanism the policy depends on.
- A stranger who challenges queue-jumping gains nothing from the queue and sustains it for everyone behind.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Games & Strategic Interaction
- Essay
- What is provable, and what people actually do