A Critical Analysis of Punishment in Public Goods Games

Social dilemmas arise whenever individuals must choose between their own self-interests or the welfare of a group. Economic games such as Public Goods Games (PGG) provide a framework for studying human behavior in social dilemmas. Cooperators put their self-interests aside for the group benefit while defectors free ride by putting their self-interests first. Punishment has been shown to be an effective mechanism for countering free riding in both model-based and human PGG experiments. But researchers always assume, since this punishment is costly to the punisher, it must be altruistic. In this study we show costly punishment in a PGG has nothing to do with altruism. Replicator dynamics are used to evolve strategies in a PGG. Our results show even a minority of punishers can improve cooperation levels in a population if the cooperators who punish are trustworthy. Finally, we argue punishment as a strategy in social dilemmas is never altruistic.