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Palatable Punishment in Real‐World Social Dilemmas? Punishing Others to Increase Cooperation Among the Unpunished 1
Author(s) -
Loukopoulos Peter,
Eek Daniel,
Gärling Tommy,
Fujii Satoshi
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
journal of applied social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1559-1816
pISSN - 0021-9029
DOI - 10.1111/j.0021-9029.2006.00042.x
Subject(s) - social dilemma , sanctions , punishment (psychology) , enforcement , spillover effect , dilemma , affect (linguistics) , social psychology , microeconomics , law and economics , psychology , economics , political science , law , philosophy , communication , epistemology
Social‐dilemma research has shown that imposing sanctions on defection may increase cooperation, a principle behind attempts to solve real‐world social dilemmas. Yet sanctioning systems are often difficult to implement: They are unpopular and often have large surveillance and enforcement costs. A new sanctioning system, intentionally punishing defection intermittently for some but not all group members, is shown to increase cooperation among those not punished, a finding labeled the spillover effect . This study suggests that the effect cannot be attributed simply to cooperative tendencies, as factors affecting cooperation do not affect the effect's size. The benefits of such a sanctioning system, which preserves the characteristics of social dilemmas, could include minimization of surveillance and enforcement costs, and greater public acceptability.