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We document the widespread existence of antisocial punishment,that is, the sanctioning of people who behave prosocially. Ourevidence comes from public goods experiments that we conductedin 16 comparable participant pools around the world. However,there is a huge cross-societal variation. Some participant poolspunished the high contributors as much as they punished thelow contributors, whereas in others people only punished lowcontributors. In some participant pools, antisocial punishmentwas strong enough to remove the cooperation-enhancing effectof punishment. We also show that weak norms of civic cooperationand the weakness of the rule of law in a country are significantpredictors of antisocial punishment. Our results show that punishmentopportunities are socially beneficial only if complemented bystrong social norms of cooperation.
1 Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, University of Nottingham, School of Economics, Sir Clive Granger Building, University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK. 2 University of St. Gallen, FEW-HSG, Varnbuelstrasse 14, CH-9000 St. Gallen, Switzerland.
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: simon.gaechter{at}nottingham.ac.uk
