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Understanding the fundamental patterns and determinants of humancooperation and the maintenance of social order in human societiesis a challenge across disciplines. The existing empirical evidencefor the higher levels of cooperation when altruistic punishmentis present versus when it is absent systematically ignores theinstitutional competition inherent in human societies. Whetherpunishment would be deliberately adopted and would similarlyenhance cooperation when directly competing with nonpunishmentinstitutions is highly controversial in light of recent findingson the detrimental effects of punishment. We show experimentallythat a sanctioning institution is the undisputed winner in acompetition with a sanction-free institution. Despite initialaversion, the entire population migrates successively to thesanctioning institution and strongly cooperates, whereas thesanction-free society becomes fully depopulated. The findingsdemonstrate the competitive advantage of sanctioning institutionsand exemplify the emergence and manifestation of social orderdriven by institutional selection.
1 University of Erfurt, Nordhäuser Strasse 63, 99089 Erfurt, Germany. 2 London School of Economics, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, UK.
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: bettina.rockenbach{at}uni-erfurt.de
J. Henrich, R. McElreath, A. Barr, J. Ensminger, C. Barrett, A. Bolyanatz, J. C. Cardenas, M. Gurven, E. Gwako, N. Henrich, et al. (2006)
Science
312, 1767-1770
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