Threat of Punishment Works, Study Suggests 

Jeanna Bryner, Senior Writer, livescience.com, 12/04/08

The threat of punishment actually does stamp out

freeloaders, tending to transform them into rule-following

members of a society, a new study suggests.

The research results show how established norms and

rules in a society could keep freeloaders in check and

increase pro-social behavior, such as helping others or

sharing with them rather than looking out for number one.

In the past, studies have found that while punishing

freeloaders can increase their cooperation with others,

the punishment itself was too costly and in the end,

punishment wouldn't be worth it. These past studies were

based on short-term effects, however.

The new study shows that over the long term, punishment

gets ingrained in people's psyches in a way that causes

them to fear getting into trouble. This fear can keep

otherwise freeloaders, who would normally act as

sponges to soak up the generosity of others without

having to contribute any time or money, on the straight-

and-narrow.

"I believe the experimental work is extremely important

and timely, as many researchers had voiced concern

whether punishment is not too costly a tool to promote

cooperation," said Karl Sigmund of the University of

Vienna, who was not involved in the current study.

Sigmund studies the evolution of cooperation among other

topics.

The research will be published in the Dec. 5 issue of the

journal Science.

Queue rules

Lead researcher Simon Gächter, a professor of the

psychology of economic decision making at the University

of Nottingham in England, gives an example to explain the

phenomenon. He recalls waiting in line for a taxi outside

of New York's Kennedy airport when someone cut in line.

Another guy in line went up and told the line-cutter he

needed to get back in the queue.

"This is punishment, because the guy was embarrassed

and turned red," Gächter told LiveScience. "It's also

costly for the guy who did it because you never know

[what could happen]."

In general, most people do wait their turn in line, and such

an enforcer isn't needed, he added.

Other examples of situations that require cooperation to

achieve socially beneficial outcomes include: voting,

paying taxes, fighting corruption, teamwork, work morale,

neighborhood watch, recycling, tackling climate change 

and so on, the researchers say.

Money game

Here's how Gächter revealed the beneficial nature of

punishment over the long run: He and his colleagues had

69 groups of three individuals play money games.

Each participant received 20 tokens and had to decide

how many tokens to keep and how many to contribute to

a group project. Keeping a token meant a person gained

the token's total worth. For each token contributed, every

participant would earn 0.5 money units, regardless of his

or her own contribution.

So the cost of contributing to the group would be one

money unit, with a return on that token of only 0.5 money

units. That makes it in the participant's material self-

interest to keep the tokens. Yet if all tokens are kept by

members, each group member will earn 20 money units; if

all tokens are put into the community pot, each member

will earn 30 money units.

The participants were split into groups, with each group

playing either 10 or 50 rounds of the game and either

having the ability to punish other group members or

having no punishment abilities. For the punishment

scenario, a player could deduct tokens from others after

finding out the players' contributions.

The catch: Each point deducted reduces that punished

player's earnings by three money units and costs the

punisher one money unit.

Punishment works

The results showed there were far fewer freeloaders, or

players who kept all the tokens for themselves, in the

games that allowed punishment compared with the no-

punishment games.

Even though punishment increased cooperation, in the

10-round games, most groups fared better with more total

tokens when there was no punishment allowed.

"The reason why this works is that there are actually

people out there who are willing to sacrifice to punish the

freeloaders," Gächter said. "The freeloaders now stop

freeloading, they start cooperating more, but it also takes

a lot of punishment to get them there."

But in the longer games, punishment did pay off in the

end.

Within the punishment scenarios, the players raked in

nearly 10 tokens more when the game was played for 50

rounds as compared with 10 rounds. In addition, players

earned a lot more in the punishment game lasting 50

rounds compared with the no-punishment game with that

number of rounds.

The earnings were so high in the long-term punishment

game because people not only cooperated more,

contributing more tokens to the shared pot, there was

also less punishment needed, so fewer tokens got

deducted from players.

"In the long run, [punishment] is not detrimental, because

the freeloaders now know there are punishers out there,"

Gächter said. "So punishment just works as a threat.

Everybody behaves nicely because they fear punishment.

Therefore, punishment is very rarely needed."

The research was funded by the University of Nottingham

and the British Academy.

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