Paul A.M. Van Lange

Bettina Rockenbach

Toshio Yamagishi

One of the key scientific challenges is the puzzle of human cooperation. Why do people cooperate? Why do people help strangers, even sometimes at a major cost to themselves? Why do people want to punish others who violate norms and undermine collective interests? Reward and punishment is a classic theme in research on social dilemmas. More recently, it has received considerable attention from scientists working in various disciplines such as economics, neuroscience, and psychology. We know now that reward and punishment can promote cooperation in so-called public good dilemmas, where people need to decide how much from their personal resources to contribute to the public good. Clearly, enjoying the contributions of others while not contributing is tempting. Punishment (and reward) are effective in reducing free-riding. Yet the recent explosion of research has also triggered many questions. For example, who can reward and punish most effectively? Is punishment effective in any culture? What are the emotions that accompany reward and punishment? Even if reward and punishment are effective, are they also efficient -- knowing that rewards and punishment are costly to administer? How can sanctioning systems best organized to be reduce free-riding? The chapters in this book, the first in a series on human cooperation, explore the workings of reward and punishment, how they should be organized, and their functions in society, thereby providing a synthesis of the psychology, economics, and neuroscience of human cooperation.

Reward and Punishment in Social Dilemmas

Paul A. M. Van Lange

One of the key scientific challenges is the puzzle of human cooperation. Why do people cooperate with one another? What causes individuals to lend a helping hand to a stranger, even if it comes at a major cost to their own well-being? Why do people severely punish those who violate social norms and undermine the collective interest? Edited by Paul A.M. Van Lange, Bettina Rockenbach, and Toshio Yamagishi, Trust in Social Dilemmas carefully considers the role of trust in establishing, promoting, and maintaining overall human cooperation. By exploring the impact of trust and effective cooperation on relationships, organizations, and communities, Trust in Social Dilemmas draws inspiration from the fact that social dilemmas, defined in terms of conflicts between self-interest and the collective interest, are omnipresent in today's society. In capturing the breadth and relevance of trust to social dilemmas and human cooperation more generally, this book is structured in three effective parts for readers: the biology and development of trust; the importance of trust for groups and organizations; and how trust factors across the overall health of today's society. As Van Lange, Rockenbach, Yamagishi, and their team of expert contributors all explore in this compelling new volume, there is little doubt that trust and cooperation are intimately related in most - if not all - of our social dilemmas.

Bettina Rockenbach

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