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Evolving Righteousness in a Corrupt World
Punishment offers a powerful mechanism for the maintenance of cooperation in human and animal societies, but the maintenance of costly punishment itself remains problematic. Game theory has shown that corruption, where punishers can defect without being punished themselves, may sustain cooperation....
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2012
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3440392/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22984510 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0044432 |
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author | Duéñez-Guzmán, Edgar A. Sadedin, Suzanne |
author_facet | Duéñez-Guzmán, Edgar A. Sadedin, Suzanne |
author_sort | Duéñez-Guzmán, Edgar A. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Punishment offers a powerful mechanism for the maintenance of cooperation in human and animal societies, but the maintenance of costly punishment itself remains problematic. Game theory has shown that corruption, where punishers can defect without being punished themselves, may sustain cooperation. However, in many human societies and some insect ones, high levels of cooperation coexist with low levels of corruption, and such societies show greater wellbeing than societies with high corruption. Here we show that small payments from cooperators to punishers can destabilize corrupt societies and lead to the spread of punishment without corruption (righteousness). Righteousness can prevail even in the face of persistent power inequalities. The resultant righteous societies are highly stable and have higher wellbeing than corrupt ones. This result may help to explain the persistence of costly punishing behavior, and indicates that corruption is a sub-optimal tool for maintaining cooperation in human societies. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-3440392 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2012 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-34403922012-09-14 Evolving Righteousness in a Corrupt World Duéñez-Guzmán, Edgar A. Sadedin, Suzanne PLoS One Research Article Punishment offers a powerful mechanism for the maintenance of cooperation in human and animal societies, but the maintenance of costly punishment itself remains problematic. Game theory has shown that corruption, where punishers can defect without being punished themselves, may sustain cooperation. However, in many human societies and some insect ones, high levels of cooperation coexist with low levels of corruption, and such societies show greater wellbeing than societies with high corruption. Here we show that small payments from cooperators to punishers can destabilize corrupt societies and lead to the spread of punishment without corruption (righteousness). Righteousness can prevail even in the face of persistent power inequalities. The resultant righteous societies are highly stable and have higher wellbeing than corrupt ones. This result may help to explain the persistence of costly punishing behavior, and indicates that corruption is a sub-optimal tool for maintaining cooperation in human societies. Public Library of Science 2012-09-12 /pmc/articles/PMC3440392/ /pubmed/22984510 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0044432 Text en © 2012 Duéñez-Guzmán, Sadedin http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Duéñez-Guzmán, Edgar A. Sadedin, Suzanne Evolving Righteousness in a Corrupt World |
title | Evolving Righteousness in a Corrupt World |
title_full | Evolving Righteousness in a Corrupt World |
title_fullStr | Evolving Righteousness in a Corrupt World |
title_full_unstemmed | Evolving Righteousness in a Corrupt World |
title_short | Evolving Righteousness in a Corrupt World |
title_sort | evolving righteousness in a corrupt world |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3440392/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22984510 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0044432 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT duenezguzmanedgara evolvingrighteousnessinacorruptworld AT sadedinsuzanne evolvingrighteousnessinacorruptworld |