Abstract
Social punishment has been suggested as a key approach to ensuring high levels of cooperation and norm compliance in one-shot
interactions. However, it has been shown that it only works when
punishment is highly cost-efficient. On the other hand, signalling
retribution hearkens back to medieval sovereignty, insofar as the
very word for gallows in French stems from the Latin word for
power and serves as a grim symbol of the ruthlessness of high
justice. Here we introduce the mechanism of signalling an act of
punishment and a special type of defector emerges, one who can
recognise this signal and avoid punishment by way of fear. We
perform extensive agent-based simulations so as to confirm and
expand our understanding of the external factors that influence the
success of social punishment. We show that our suggested mechanism serves as a catalyst for cooperation, even when signalling and
punishment are very costly. We observe the preventive nature of
advertising retributive acts and we contend that the resulting social
prosperity is a desirable outcome in the contexts of AI and multi-agent systems. Overall, we suggest that fear acts as an effective
stimulus to pro-social behaviour
interactions. However, it has been shown that it only works when
punishment is highly cost-efficient. On the other hand, signalling
retribution hearkens back to medieval sovereignty, insofar as the
very word for gallows in French stems from the Latin word for
power and serves as a grim symbol of the ruthlessness of high
justice. Here we introduce the mechanism of signalling an act of
punishment and a special type of defector emerges, one who can
recognise this signal and avoid punishment by way of fear. We
perform extensive agent-based simulations so as to confirm and
expand our understanding of the external factors that influence the
success of social punishment. We show that our suggested mechanism serves as a catalyst for cooperation, even when signalling and
punishment are very costly. We observe the preventive nature of
advertising retributive acts and we contend that the resulting social
prosperity is a desirable outcome in the contexts of AI and multi-agent systems. Overall, we suggest that fear acts as an effective
stimulus to pro-social behaviour
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Proceedings of AAMAS'20 |
| Publisher | Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) |
| Pages | 1819-1821 |
| ISBN (Electronic) | 9781450375184 |
| Publication status | Published - 9 May 2020 |
| Event | 19th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems - Online (underline.io), Auckland, New Zealand Duration: 9 May 2020 → 13 May 2020 https://aamas2020.conference.auckland.ac.nz/ |
Publication series
| Name | AAMAS Proceedings |
|---|---|
| ISSN (Electronic) | 2523-5699 |
Conference
| Conference | 19th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems |
|---|---|
| Abbreviated title | AAMAS'20 |
| Country | New Zealand |
| City | Auckland |
| Period | 9/05/20 → 13/05/20 |
| Internet address |
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Cite this
Cimpeanu, T., & Han, T. A. (2020). Fear of Punishment Promotes the Emergence of Cooperation and Enhanced Social Welfare in Social Dilemmas. In Proceedings of AAMAS'20 (pp. 1819-1821). (AAMAS Proceedings). Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). http://ifaamas.org/Proceedings/aamas2020/pdfs/p1819.pdf