@inproceedings{87f87b8fab1d4409bff23b43696bda7e,
title = "A Critical Analysis of Punishment in Public Goods Games",
abstract = "Social dilemmas arise whenever individuals must choose between their own self-interests or the welfare of a group. Economic games such as Public Goods Games (PGG) provide a framework for studying human behavior in social dilemmas. Cooperators put their self-interests aside for the group benefit while defectors free ride by putting their self-interests first. Punishment has been shown to be an effective mechanism for countering free riding in both model-based and human PGG experiments. But researchers always assume, since this punishment is costly to the punisher, it must be altruistic. In this study we show costly punishment in a PGG has nothing to do with altruism. Replicator dynamics are used to evolve strategies in a PGG. Our results show even a minority of punishers can improve cooperation levels in a population if the cooperators who punish are trustworthy. Finally, we argue punishment as a strategy in social dilemmas is never altruistic.",
keywords = "Altruism, Costly punishment, Public goods games, Social dilemma",
author = "Greenwood, {Garrison W.} and Hussein Abbass and Eleni Petraki",
year = "2018",
doi = "10.1109/CIG.2018.8490421",
language = "English",
isbn = "9781538643594",
series = "IEEE Conference on Computatonal Intelligence and Games, CIG",
publisher = "IEEE, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers",
pages = "1--5",
booktitle = "Proceedings of the 2018 IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games, CIG 2018",
address = "United States",
note = "14th IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games, CIG 2018 ; Conference date: 14-08-2018 Through 17-08-2018",
}