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Human behaviour

Punisher pays

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The tendency of humans to punish perceived free-loaders, even at a cost to themselves, is an evolutionary puzzle: punishers perish, and those who benefit the most are those who have never punished at all.

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Figure 1: Winners don't punish.

POPPERFOTO/GETTY IMAGES

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Manfred Milinski is in the Department of Evolutionary Ecology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology, August-Thienemann-Straße 2, D-24306 Plön, Germany. milinski@evolbio.mpg.de,

    Manfred Milinski

  2. Bettina Rockenbach is in the Department of Economics, University of Erfurt, Nordhäuser Straße 63, D-99089 Erfurt, Germany. bettina.rockenbach@uni-erfurt.de,

    Bettina Rockenbach

Authors
  1. Manfred Milinski
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  2. Bettina Rockenbach
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Milinski, M., Rockenbach, B. Punisher pays. Nature 452, 297–298 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/452297a

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