Punishment is slower than cooperation or defection in online network games

Punishment serves as a balancing force that dissuades people from acting selfishly, which complements cooperation as an essential characteristic for the prosperity of human societies. Past studies using economic games with two options (cooperation and defection) reported that cooperation decisions a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Scientific reports 2024-10, Vol.14 (1), p.23024-10, Article 23024
Main Authors: Dewey, George, Ando, Hiroyasu, Ikesu, Ryo, Brewer, Timothy F., Goto, Ryunosuke, Nishi, Akihiro
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
631/181/2469
631/553/2712
Adult
Cooperation
Cooperative Behavior
Decision Making
Decision time
Evolution of cooperation
Experiments
Female
Games
Games, Experimental
Humanities and Social Sciences
Humans
Male
Medical research
multidisciplinary
Public health
Punishment
Punishment - psychology
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Time pressure
Young Adult
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Summary:Punishment serves as a balancing force that dissuades people from acting selfishly, which complements cooperation as an essential characteristic for the prosperity of human societies. Past studies using economic games with two options (cooperation and defection) reported that cooperation decisions are generally faster than defection decisions and that time pressure possibly induces human players to be more intuitive and thus cooperative. However, it is unclear where punishment decisions sit on this time spectrum. Therefore, we recruited human players and implemented two series of online network games with cooperation, defection, and punishment options. First, we find that punishment decisions are slower than cooperation or defection decisions across both game series. Second, we find that imposing experimental time pressure on in-game decisions neither reduces nor increases the frequency of punishment decisions, suggesting that time pressure may not directly interact with the mechanisms that drive players to choose to punish.
ISSN:2045-2322
2045-2322
DOI:10.1038/s41598-024-72939-2