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      Positive interactions promote public cooperation.

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          Abstract

          The public goods game is the classic laboratory paradigm for studying collective action problems. Each participant chooses how much to contribute to a common pool that returns benefits to all participants equally. The ideal outcome occurs if everybody contributes the maximum amount, but the self-interested strategy is not to contribute anything. Most previous studies have found punishment to be more effective than reward for maintaining cooperation in public goods games. The typical design of these studies, however, represses future consequences for today's actions. In an experimental setting, we compare public goods games followed by punishment, reward, or both in the setting of truly repeated games, in which player identities persist from round to round. We show that reward is as effective as punishment for maintaining public cooperation and leads to higher total earnings. Moreover, when both options are available, reward leads to increased contributions and payoff, whereas punishment has no effect on contributions and leads to lower payoff. We conclude that reward outperforms punishment in repeated public goods games and that human cooperation in such repeated settings is best supported by positive interactions with others.

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          Author and article information

          Journal
          Science
          Science (New York, N.Y.)
          American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
          1095-9203
          0036-8075
          Sep 04 2009
          : 325
          : 5945
          Affiliations
          [1 ] Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
          Article
          325/5945/1272 NIHMS191267
          10.1126/science.1177418
          2875121
          19729661
          8a01326f-b4dd-4d1d-aba7-ee5c6bfafef0
          History

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