Data from: Punishment as a means of competition: implications for strong reciprocity theory

Strong negative reciprocity, that is, sanctions imposed on norm violators at the punisher’s own expense, has powerful cooperation-enhancing effects in both real-life and experimental game situations. However, it is plausible that punishment may obtain alternative roles depending on social context and the personality characteristics of participants. We examined the occurrence of punishing behavior among 80 subjects in a strongly competitive Public Goods game setting. Despite the punishment condition, the amount of the contributions decreased steadily during the game. The amount of contributions had no significant effect on received and imposed punishments. The results indicate that certain social contexts (in this case, intensive competition) exert modifying effects on the role that punishment takes on. Subjects punished each other in order to achieve a higher rank and a financially better outcome. Punishment primarily functioned as a means of rivalry, instead of as a way of second-order cooperation, as strong reciprocity suggests. These results indicate the need for the possible modification of the social conditions of punishment mechanisms described by the strong reciprocity theory as an evolutionary explanation of human cooperation.强负互惠（Strong negative reciprocity），即惩罚者以自身成本为代价对规范违反者施加的制裁，在现实生活与实验博弈场景中均具备显著的合作增进效应。然而，惩罚的角色或会因社会语境与参与者的人格特质发生变化，这一推论具备合理性。本研究在强竞争型公共物品博弈（Public Goods game）场景中，对80名被试的惩罚行为发生情况进行了考察。尽管设置了惩罚机制条件，实验过程中参与者的贡献额仍持续下降。贡献额对被试所接收及施加的惩罚量均无显著影响。研究结果表明，特定社会语境（本研究中即为高强度竞争）会对惩罚所承担的角色产生调节作用。被试实施惩罚行为的目的是为了获取更高排名与更优经济收益。在此场景中，惩罚主要充当了竞争对抗的手段，而非强互惠理论所提出的二阶合作维系途径。上述结果显示，作为人类合作进化解释的强互惠理论（strong reciprocity theory），其所述惩罚机制的社会适用条件或需作出相应修正。