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Observed punishment spillover effects: a laboratory investigation of behavior in a social dilemma

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Abstract

Punishment has been shown to be an effective reinforcement mechanism. Intentional or not, punishment will likely generate spillover effects that extend beyond one’s immediate decision environment, and these spillovers are not as well understood. We seek to understand these secondary spillover effects in a controlled lab setting using a standard social dilemma: the voluntary contributions mechanism. We find that spillovers occur when others observe punishment outside their own social dilemma. However, the direction of the spillover effect depends crucially on personal punishment history and whether one is personally exempt from punishment or not.

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Notes

  1. See Andreoni et al. (2003), Fehr and Fischbacher (2004), Ostrom et al. (1992), and Xiao and Houser (2011) for examples.

  2. The same argument can be made for exogenously imposed laws on groups such as gangs or members of the mafia where they likely do not believe the behavioral standard being enforced is important for their group.

  3. A report on the current knowledge was made to the Judiciary Committee of the Connecticut General Assembly in 1997 where they state in Part 2 of section 4D “However, the increase in marijuana use was even greater in other states and the largest proportionate increase occurred in those states with the most severe penalties.” The report can be accessed via http://www.cga.ct.gov/lrc/drugpolicy/drugpolicyrpt8.htm#Sec4D.

  4. Note that the aversion to local social norm violation has been shown to lead to third-party punishment in Fehr and Fischbacher (2004). This behavior is seen in other settings as well. For instance, Cooper and Glenn Dutcher (2011) show that proposer behavior in an ultimatum game is consistent with the proposer learning which offers are socially acceptable (i.e., socially unacceptable proposals are rejected and the proposers thus learn the social norms. As the saying goes, “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.”).

  5. There is some confusing usage of the term "social learning" applied to this setting. We are referring to the usage “localized conformity” in Bikhchandani et al. (1992), and not the usage in Arvey et al. (1985), Trevino (1992) and references therein.

  6. This internalization of observation of punishment has been labeled vicarious punishment in psychology (Malouff et al. 2009).

  7. We note that Xiao and Houser (2011) was well designed to answer their research question about how public punishment conveys localized cooperative norms better than private punishment. Our outline here is to merely highlight the differences in their design and our own in that theirs relies partially on endogenous punishment factors while ours does not. Thus, the environments they address and the ones we address are quite different.

  8. Notice that \( \frac{dC(.)}{dP} = 0 \) when P = 0. See Ku and Salmon (2010) for a similar model.

  9. We referred to these as Group A and Group B in the experiment instructions. We changed the labels here to Super-group 1 and 2 to avoid confusion in the text when referring to games A, B and C, which are the treatments. In the instructions, treatments were unnamed and simply described by the rules that would apply to each particular block of trials.

  10. Unless denoted otherwise, the p values are the result of a two-sided t test where standard errors are clustered by subject to control for the obvious non-independence of observations over time.

  11. We estimated the regression models for the ABC and ACB conditions separately to make interpretations simple since the data gathered from these two settings are vastly different. If the regressions are combined and the appropriate triple interaction effects are included, the same result emerges. This also motivated us to separate Game B and Game C analysis.

  12. In some sessions, subjects had the chance to briefly chat with their OGC. This had no effect on our results and thus we pool the data. These regressions are available upon request.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC, 28608-2051, USA

    David L. Dickinson

  2. Department of Economics, Finance & Marketing, University of Central Missouri, Warrensburg, MO, 64093, USA

    E. Glenn Dutcher

  3. Economic Science Institute, Chapman University, Orange, CA, 92886, USA

    Cortney S. Rodet

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  1. David L. Dickinson
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  2. E. Glenn Dutcher
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  3. Cortney S. Rodet
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Correspondence to E. Glenn Dutcher.

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Dickinson, D.L., Glenn Dutcher, E. & Rodet, C.S. Observed punishment spillover effects: a laboratory investigation of behavior in a social dilemma. Exp Econ 18, 136–153 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10683-014-9399-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10683-014-9399-7

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