What is more, altruism sometimes evolves without selfish punishment. In a software simulation, Eldakar and Wilson have found that as the cost of punishing cheaters falls, so do the number of selfish punishers. "When punishment is cheap, lots of people punish," Wilson explains. And among humans, there is no shortage of low-cost ways to keep others in line from outright ostracism to good old-fashioned gossip.

Editor's Note: This story was originally published with the title "Thriving on Selfishness"

5 Comments

1. 1. rdholland 09:22 AM 4/1/09

   I suppose this means that Tim Geithner will have the IRS step up its pursuit of tax cheats. Given the continual tax problems with Democrats nominated by President Obama, it also explains why Democrats are so anal about increasing taxes. They are taking advantage of the altruists who are less likely to cheat on their own taxes.

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2. 2. leukothea 11:48 AM 4/1/09

   All the dashes in this article are missing, making it a bit difficult to read.

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3. 3. mediasnipe 03:08 PM 4/1/09

   There's another good reason for tolerating some amount of cheating: it's an insurance strategy. There are times when a little cheating does a small amount of harm to the group, and a large amount of benefit to the cheater. Imagine a "freeloader" who is hauling less wood to the campfire than his neighbors. I could punish him through disapprobation. However, I realize that he might not be feeling well, or might just be having one of those lazy days. By not punishing him, I preserve the social space needed for my own future free riding. As a social animal, I can also calculate optimal (or at least superior) freeloading opportunities: times when group cost is low and personal benefit is high. The shared understanding that "we all do it sometimes" makes this acceptable.

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4. 4. BurmaYank in reply to rdholland 12:16 PM 4/3/09

   sorry, rdholland, but I just felt altruistically compelled to punish your blatant political trolling of this non-political blogspace by reporting your obtuse partisan propogandizing as "abuse"

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5. 5. weirdo13 06:22 PM 5/2/09

   The last words of article confused me a lot where I read it recently in Polish (May) edition of SciAm.
   
   I hope there were not conclusion...
   
   "outright ostracism " + "good old-fashioned gossip" == high-society reincarnation of lynch ??
   
   I thought that theories about decline of USA are exaggerated, but if Americans would really prefer gossips and ostracism than trials and judge sentences (or discussion and explanation) maybe these theories are not so wrong ... :)
   
   Anyway, the regarded institutional punishment, if exists probably modifies the results.

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