Ostracism and fines in a public goods game with accidental contributions: The importance of punishment type
Journal Title: Judgment and Decision Making - Year 2014, Vol 9, Issue 4
Abstract
Punishment is an important method for discouraging uncooperative behavior. We use a novel design for a public goods game in which players have explicit intended contributions with accidentally changed actual contributions, and in which players can apply costly fines or ostracism. Moreover, all players except the subject are automated, whereby we control the intended contributions, actual contributions, costly fines, and ostracisms experienced by the subject. We assess subject’s utilization of other players’ intended and actual contributions when making decisions to fine or ostracize. Hierarchical Bayesian logistic regression provides robust estimates. We find that subjects emphasize actual contribution more than intended contribution when deciding to fine, but emphasize intended contribution more than actual contribution when deciding to ostracize. We also find that the efficacy of past punishment, in terms of changing the contributions of the punished player, influences the type of punishment selected. Finally, we find that the punishment norms of the automated players affect the punishments performed by the subject. These novel paradigms and analyses indicate that punishment is flexible and adaptive, contrary to some evolutionary theories that predict inflexible punishments that emphasize outcomes.
Authors and Affiliations
Torrin M. Liddell and John K. Kruschke
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP678147
- DOI -
- Views 123
- Downloads 0
Using metacognitive cues to infer others’ thinking
Three studies tested whether people use cues about the way other people think—for example, whether others respond fast vs. slow—to infer what responses other people might give to reasoning problems. People who solve reas...
Possession, feelings of ownership and the endowment effect
Research in judgment and decision making generally ignores the distinction between factual and subjective feelings of ownership, tacitly assuming that the two correspond closely. The present research suggests that this a...
The retrospective gambler’s fallacy: Unlikely events, constructing the past, and multiple universes
The gambler’s fallacy (Tune, 1964) refers to the belief that a streak is more likely to end than chance would dictate. In three studies, participants exhibited a retrospective gambler’s fallacy (RGF) in which an event th...
The effects of mental steps and compatibility on Bayesian reasoning
Four laboratory studies were conducted to test the hypothesis that correct Bayesian reasoning can be predicted by two factors of task complexity — the number of mental steps required to reach the normative solution, and...
An IRT forecasting model: linking proper scoring rules to item response theory
This article proposes an Item Response Theoretical (IRT) forecasting model that incorporates proper scoring rules and provides evaluations of forecasters’ expertise in relation to the features of the specific questions t...