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: Grits for Breakfast

Why 'carrots trump sticks,' or, why 'winners don't punish'

Does punishment or reward work better at influencing human behavior? It's a question that's seemingly fundamental to what goes on in the justice system, but one that's seldom subjected to empirical analysis. So I found this discussion of public-goods games by Ed Yong at Not Exactly Rocket Science a fascinating train of thought. He writes that: Many researchers have turned to punishment for an answer, testing the idea that societies are glued together by the ability to mete out penalties to freeloaders, often at some personal cost. Long -time readers of this blog may remember a set of articles on this topic. The first, from Simon Gachter's group, showed that the ability to punish freeloaders stabilises cooperative behaviour, but a second study from Martin Nowak showed that this boost in cooperation carries a cost - by escalating conflicts, the ability to punish leaves groups with smaller rewards than those that shun punishments altogether...continue to full post

Full post as published by Grits for Breakfast on September 10, 2009 (boomark / email).