"Research from The University of Nottingham has shed new light on the way in which people co-operate for the common good — and what happens when they don’t.
In a new international study of 16 countries, published in the prestigious journal Science, economists studied the extent to which some people will sacrifice personal gain to benefit the wider public, while ‘freeloaders’ try to take advantage of their generosity.
Marked national differences arose when freeloaders were punished for putting their own interests ahead of the common good. And whether they accepted their punishment or retaliated in kind depended on what kind of society they lived in, the researchers found.
In countries like the USA, Switzerland and the UK, freeloaders accepted their punishment and became much more co-operative. But in countries based on more authoritarian and parochial social institutions such as Oman, Saudi Arabia, Greece and Russia, the freeloaders took revenge — retaliating against those who had punished them.
Co-operation for the common good plummeted as a result.
In societies where the modern ethic of co-operation with unrelated strangers is less familiar and the rule of law is perceived to be weak, revenge is more common and co-operation suffers, the study found.
Economists are keen to understand the decision-making processes behind co-operation, as working together for the common good is crucial for progress in any society — not least for effectively addressing big issues such as recycling and tackling climate change.
Professor Simon Gaechter and Dr Benedikt Herrmann at The University of Nottingham and Dr Christian Thoni at the University of St Gallen, Switzerland, studied the behaviour of people in 16 cities around the world, from Boston and Bonn to Riyadh, Minsk, Nottingham, Seoul and others. Volunteers played a ‘public goods’ game in which they were given tokens and told they could either keep them all for themselves, or put it into a common ‘pot’ that would yield extra interest that would be shared out equally among all players.
If all volunteers pooled their money then all would come out with more at the end of the game. But if individuals chose to keep the money for themselves — and not contribute anything — they could keep all of it and also benefit from the generosity of others, by sharing in the pooled interest.
Levels of co-operation were remarkably similar across all 16 nations. However, behaviour changed dramatically when everyone’s contributions were revealed — and players were given the ability to ‘punish’ other players. Players could punish each other by taking tokens away from each other, although this option cost the punisher a token as well. As previous studies have shown, players were willing to part with a token of their own in order to punish low investors or freeloaders.
But the Science study also uncovered a new phenomenon. In subsequent rounds of the game, the freeloaders took revenge and hit back at their higher-paying counterparts in what is described as ‘anti-social punishment’. Or at least, they did in some cities — most notably in more traditional societies based on authoritarian and parochial social institutions such as Muscat in Oman, Athens, Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, Samara in Russia, Minsk in Belarus, Istanbul, Seoul and Dnipropetrovsk in Ukraine. Players in these cities showed the highest levels of ‘anti-social punishment’.
The ultimate effect of this is to decrease co-operation between individuals, bringing down contributions and earnings to very low levels..."
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