#3338. Do descriptive social norms drive peer punishment? Conditional punishment strategies and their impact on cooperation

October 2026publication date
Proposal available till 19-05-2025
4 total number of authors per manuscript0 $

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Journal’s subject area:
Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous);
Experimental and Cognitive Psychology;
Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics;
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Abstract:
Peer punishment is widely considered a key mechanism supporting cooperation in human groups. Although much research shows that human behavior is shaped by the prevailing social norms, little is known about how punishment decisions are impacted by the social context. We present a set of large-scale incentivized experiments in which participants could punish their partner conditional on either the level of cooperation or the level of punishment displayed by others who previously interacted in the same setting. With a dynamic model we demonstrate that conditional punishment strategies can substantially promote cooperation. Conformist punishment helps cooperation to gain a foothold in a population, and norm enforcement helps to maintain cooperation at high levels. Our results provide solid empirical evidence of conditional punishment strategies and illustrate their possible implications for the dynamics of human cooperation.
Keywords:
Conditional strategies; Cooperation; Decision-making experiment; Online experiment; Peer punishment; Sanctioning

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