Dispositional free riders do not free ride on punishment
Strong reciprocity explains prosocial cooperation by the presence of individuals who incur costs to help those who helped them (‘strong positive reciprocity’) and to punish those who wronged them (‘strong negative reciprocity’). Theories of social preferences predict that in contrast to ‘strong reci...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Nature Publishing Group
2018
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| Online Access: | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/53394/ |
| _version_ | 1848798931805274112 |
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| author | Weber, Till O. Weisel, Ori Gächter, Simon |
| author_facet | Weber, Till O. Weisel, Ori Gächter, Simon |
| author_sort | Weber, Till O. |
| building | Nottingham Research Data Repository |
| collection | Online Access |
| description | Strong reciprocity explains prosocial cooperation by the presence of individuals who incur costs to help those who helped them (‘strong positive reciprocity’) and to punish those who wronged them (‘strong negative reciprocity’). Theories of social preferences predict that in contrast to ‘strong reciprocators’, self-regarding people cooperate and punish only if there are sufficient future benefits. Here, we test this prediction in a two-stage design. First, participants are classified according to their disposition towards strong positive reciprocity as either dispositional conditional cooperators (DCC) or dispositional free riders (DFR). Participants then play a one-shot public goods game, either with or without punishment. As expected, DFR cooperate only when punishment is possible, whereas DCC cooperate without punishment. Surprisingly, dispositions towards strong positive reciprocity are unrelated to strong negative reciprocity: punishment by DCC and DFR is practically identical. The ‘burden of cooperation’ is thus carried by a larger set of individuals than previously assumed. |
| first_indexed | 2025-11-14T20:27:37Z |
| format | Article |
| id | nottingham-53394 |
| institution | University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus |
| institution_category | Local University |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2025-11-14T20:27:37Z |
| publishDate | 2018 |
| publisher | Nature Publishing Group |
| recordtype | eprints |
| repository_type | Digital Repository |
| spelling | nottingham-533942018-08-22T14:26:28Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/53394/ Dispositional free riders do not free ride on punishment Weber, Till O. Weisel, Ori Gächter, Simon Strong reciprocity explains prosocial cooperation by the presence of individuals who incur costs to help those who helped them (‘strong positive reciprocity’) and to punish those who wronged them (‘strong negative reciprocity’). Theories of social preferences predict that in contrast to ‘strong reciprocators’, self-regarding people cooperate and punish only if there are sufficient future benefits. Here, we test this prediction in a two-stage design. First, participants are classified according to their disposition towards strong positive reciprocity as either dispositional conditional cooperators (DCC) or dispositional free riders (DFR). Participants then play a one-shot public goods game, either with or without punishment. As expected, DFR cooperate only when punishment is possible, whereas DCC cooperate without punishment. Surprisingly, dispositions towards strong positive reciprocity are unrelated to strong negative reciprocity: punishment by DCC and DFR is practically identical. The ‘burden of cooperation’ is thus carried by a larger set of individuals than previously assumed. Nature Publishing Group 2018-06-19 Article PeerReviewed application/pdf en cc_by https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/53394/1/Free%20riders%20s41467-018-04775-8dfr.pdf Weber, Till O., Weisel, Ori and Gächter, Simon (2018) Dispositional free riders do not free ride on punishment. Nature Communications, 9 (1). ISSN 2041-1723 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-04775-8 10.1038/s41467-018-04775-8 10.1038/s41467-018-04775-8 10.1038/s41467-018-04775-8 |
| spellingShingle | Weber, Till O. Weisel, Ori Gächter, Simon Dispositional free riders do not free ride on punishment |
| title | Dispositional free riders do not free ride on punishment |
| title_full | Dispositional free riders do not free ride on punishment |
| title_fullStr | Dispositional free riders do not free ride on punishment |
| title_full_unstemmed | Dispositional free riders do not free ride on punishment |
| title_short | Dispositional free riders do not free ride on punishment |
| title_sort | dispositional free riders do not free ride on punishment |
| url | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/53394/ https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/53394/ https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/53394/ |