Collective punishment is more effective than collective reward for promoting cooperation

• DOI: 10.1038/srep17752
• Publication Date: 2015-12-04T10:02:22Z
• Authors: Lei Gao; Zhen Wang; Riccardo Pansini; Yao-Tang Li; Rui-Wu Wang
• Keywords: Sociology and Political Science; Economics; Social Sciences; Public good; Epistemology; Social psychology; Article; Agricultural and Biological Sciences; 03 medical and health sciences; Game Theory; Punishment; Reward; Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology; State (computer science); Genetics; Microeconomics; Humans; Psychology; Social dilemma; Punishment (psychology); Cooperative Behavior; Symbiosis; Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics; Order (exchange); 0303 health sciences; Evolutionary Dynamics of Genetic Adaptation and Mutation; Free rider problem; Life Sciences; Mechanism (biology); Stochastic game; Models, Theoretical; Altruism; Biological Evolution; Computer science; FOS: Philosophy, ethics and religion; FOS: Psychology; Algorithm; Cooperation; Philosophy; FOS: Biological sciences; Impact of Pollinator Decline on Ecosystems and Agriculture; Evolution of Cooperation and Altruism in Social Systems; Finance

AbstractCollective punishment and reward are usually regarded as two potential mechanisms to explain the evolution of cooperation. Both scenarios, however, seem problematic to understand cooperative behavior, because they can raise the second-order free-rider problem and many organisms are not able to discriminate less cooperating individuals. Even though they have been proved to increase cooperation, there has been a debate about which one being more effective. To address this issue, we resort to the N-player evolutionary snowdrift game (NESG), where a collective punishment/reward mechanism is added by allowing some players to display punishment/reward towards all remaining players. By means of numerous simulations and analyses, we find that collective punishment is more effective in promoting cooperation for a relatively high initial frequency of cooperation or for a relatively small group. When the intensity of punishment exceeds a certain threshold, a stable state of full cooperation emerges for both small and large groups. In contrast, such state does not appear for large groups playing a NESG with reward mechanism. In the case of mutualistic interactions, finally, our results show the new payoff with collective punishment/reward can lead to the coexistence of cooperators and defectors when discrimination between these two is not possible.