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Journal ArticleDOI

The provision of a sanctioning system as a public good

01 Jul 1986-Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (American Psychological Association)-Vol. 51, Iss: 1, pp 110-116
About: This article is published in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.The article was published on 1986-07-01. It has received 1297 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Resource allocation & Prosocial behavior.
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
08 Dec 2006-Science
TL;DR: Five mechanisms for the evolution of cooperation are discussed: kin selection, direct reciprocity, indirect reciprocities, network reciprocation, group selection, and group selection.
Abstract: Cooperation is needed for evolution to construct new levels of organization. Genomes, cells, multicellular organisms, social insects, and human society are all based on cooperation. Cooperation means that selfish replicators forgo some of their reproductive potential to help one another. But natural selection implies competition and therefore opposes cooperation unless a specific mechanism is at work. Here I discuss five mechanisms for the evolution of cooperation: kin selection, direct reciprocity, indirect reciprocity, network reciprocity, and group selection. For each mechanism, a simple rule is derived that specifies whether natural selection can lead to cooperation.

4,899 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
Elinor Ostrom1
TL;DR: The Logic of Collective Action (LCA) as mentioned in this paper was a seminal work in modern democratic thought that challenged the assumption that groups would tend to form and take collective action in democratic societies.
Abstract: With the publication of The Logic of Collective Action in 1965, Mancur Olson challenged a cherished foundation of modern democratic thought that groups would tend to form and take collective action...

3,231 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Evidence from a selection of research topics relevant to pandemics is discussed, including work on navigating threats, social and cultural influences on behaviour, science communication, moral decision-making, leadership, and stress and coping.
Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic represents a massive global health crisis. Because the crisis requires large-scale behaviour change and places significant psychological burdens on individuals, insights from the social and behavioural sciences can be used to help align human behaviour with the recommendations of epidemiologists and public health experts. Here we discuss evidence from a selection of research topics relevant to pandemics, including work on navigating threats, social and cultural influences on behaviour, science communication, moral decision-making, leadership, and stress and coping. In each section, we note the nature and quality of prior research, including uncertainty and unsettled issues. We identify several insights for effective response to the COVID-19 pandemic and highlight important gaps researchers should move quickly to fill in the coming weeks and months.

3,223 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
23 Oct 2003-Nature
TL;DR: In this article, the authors point out that current gene-based evolutionary theories cannot explain important patterns of human altruism, pointing towards the importance of both theories of cultural evolution as well as gene-culture co-evolution.
Abstract: Some of the most fundamental questions concerning our evolutionary origins, our social relations, and the organization of society are centred around issues of altruism and selfishness. Experimental evidence indicates that human altruism is a powerful force and is unique in the animal world. However, there is much individual heterogeneity and the interaction between altruists and selfish individuals is vital to human cooperation. Depending on the environment, a minority of altruists can force a majority of selfish individuals to cooperate or, conversely, a few egoists can induce a large number of altruists to defect. Current gene-based evolutionary theories cannot explain important patterns of human altruism, pointing towards the importance of both theories of cultural evolution as well as gene–culture co-evolution.

2,610 citations

Posted Content
TL;DR: Current gene-based evolutionary theories cannot explain important patterns of human altruism, pointing towards the importance of both theories of cultural evolution as well as gene–culture co-evolution.
Abstract: Some of the most fundamental questions concerning our evolutionary origins, our social relations, and the organization of society are centred around issues of altruism and selfishness. Experimental evidence indicates that human altruism is a powerful force and is unique in the animal world. However, there is much individual heterogeneity and the interaction between altruists and selfish individuals is vital to human cooperation. Depending on the environment, a minority of altruists can force a majority of selfish individuals to cooperate or, conversely, a few egoists can induce a large number of altruists to defect. Current gene-based evolutionary theories cannot explain important patterns of human altruism, pointing towards the importance of both theories of cultural evolution as well as gene–culture co-evolution.

2,566 citations


Additional excerpts

  • ...The punishment of non-cooperators in repeated interaction...

    [...]

References
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, a group of high school students were randomly assigned to groups which were confronted with an investment opportunity and each subject could invest resources provided by the experimenter in either a private good, which returned a fixed amount of money to the individual per token invested, or a public good.
Abstract: For an experiment on the problem of collective action, randomly selected high school students were randomly assigned to groups which were confronted with an investment opportunity. Each subject could invest resources provided by the experimenter in either a private good, which returned a fixed amount of money to the individual per token invested, or a public good. The public good returned money to the group and, beyond a given provision point, returned much more money per token invested than did the private good. All money from the public good was divided according to a present formula. Thus, subjects could "free ride" on the public good, if other group members invested in it, by taking their share of it and keeping their own resources for themselves. Groups were randomly designated as either large or small, and unequal or equal in the distribution of interest and of resources within the group. Results indicate that the effects of free riding were much weaker than would be predicted from most economic the...

699 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, positive and negative selective incentives are shown analytically to have different structural implications when used to induce collective action, and the most important implication is the difference between rewards and punishments when they are used as selective incentives.
Abstract: Positive and negative selective incentives are shown analytically to have different structural implications when used to induce collective action. Positive selective incentives are effective for motivating small numbers of cooperators and generate pressures toward smaller, more "elite" actions, unless the incentives have jointness of supply. Nega­ tive selective incentives are effective for motivating unanimous co­ operation, but their use is often uneven and cyclical and may gener­ ate hostilities which disrupt the cooperation they enforce. Examples of these dynamics are found in many arenas of collective action and social movements. One important feature of collective action is the use of selective incen­ tives to reward those who cooperate in the action or punish those who do not. An arts fund may reward contributors by giving a lavish party or by printing their names in a program. Workers ensure cooperation with a strike by threatening to ostracize or beat up strikebreakers. In the 1960s, famous folksingers rewarded antiwar demonstrators by singing at protest rallies. In the 1970s, Louisville antibusing protesters threatened violence against other whites to induce them to keep their children out of school. This paper considers relations among potential cooperators, not their re­ lations with any "enemy." It discusses the processes that arise when actors reward and punish each other to motivate or sustain cooperation in some form of collective action. The first half of the paper provides a formal analysis which reviews the work of Mancur Olson and his critics, formal­ izes the decision to participate in collective action, and then formalizes and examines the decision to use a resource as a selective incentive to in­ duce others to act collectively. The second half of the paper draws out the implications of this analysis. The most important implication is the difference between rewards and punishments when they are used as selective incentives. This implication 1 I would like to thank James Wiggins, Elizabeth Martin, Patricia Rieker, Jean War­ ren, Ross Purdy, William Gamson, and Anthony Oberschall for helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper, and especially to acknowledge the extensive, detailed, and illuminating critical commentary of John Lemke, Bertrand Shelton, and three anony­ mous reviewers as this paper moved toward its final form.

479 citations