Emergence of Social Punishment and Cooperation through Prior Commitments

Social punishment, whereby cooperators punish defectors, has been suggested as an important mechanism that promotes the emergence of cooperation or main-tenance of social norms in the context of the one-shot (i.e. non-repeated) interaction. However, whenever an-tisocial punishment, whereby defectors punish cooper-ators, is available, this antisocial behavior outperforms social punishment, leading to the destruction of cooperation. In this paper, we use evolutionary game the-ory to show that this antisocial behavior can be efficiently restrained by relying on prior commitments, wherein agents can arrange, prior to an interaction, agreements regarding posterior compensation by those who dishonor the agreements. We show that, although the commitment mechanism by itself can guarantee a notable level of cooperation, a significantly higher level is achieved when both mechanisms, those of propos-ing prior commitments and of punishment, are available in co-presence. Interestingly, social punishment prevails and dominates in this system as it can take advantage of the commitment mechanism to cope with antisocial behaviors. That is, establishment of a commitment system helps to pave the way for the evolution of social punish-ment and abundant cooperation, even in the presence of antisocial punishment.