"Carrots are better than sticks"

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Carrots are better than sticks

Want cooperation? Rewarding the helpful can be more effective than punishing wrongdoers, a new experiment in game theory suggests.

In the public goods game, players choose whether or not to contribute money to a common pot. The pot is multiplied and redistributed equally, regardless of who contributes and who doesn't. When people play a pure version of the game, the temptation to freeload – reap the rewards without contributing anything – often leads to rapidly disintegrating cooperation.

Previous research found that cooperation is promoted by allowing players to punish freeloaders: cooperative players would pay a small cost that enables them to inflict a loss on the offender. This approach was more effective than reward, at least in games where players switch partners every round.


More carrot, less stick
David Rand and his colleagues at Harvard University modified the public goods game to reflect what they argue is a more natural scenario: people play with the same group for many rounds, establishing reputations with each other.

Players could choose to reward or punish others at a small cost to themselves. Rand found that rewarding or punishing were equally likely to lead to cooperation and higher earnings, but when players had the option to either punish or reward, but chose to reward, they received higher absolute payoffs. "It becomes in one's self-interest to help the group," says Rand.

"It's sort of a 'you scratch the group's back and I'll scratch yours'," he says.

Money for nothing
Sam Bowles at the Santa Fe Institute, New Mexico, cautions that Rand's game does not accurately reflect real economies. He points out, for example, that under Rand's rules the rewarder pays $4 and the rewardee "magically" receives $12. He calls this an unnatural scenario. "If you take away the free lunch, it doesn't work," says Bowles.

Rand points out that such disproportionate rewards often occur when we spend time, effort and money assisting people around us: helping a friend to move furniture, for instance, or recommending a colleague for promotion. Actions like these may have a smaller cost to us than the benefit they provide others. "These sorts of productive interactions are the building blocks of our society and should not be disregarded," he says.

Journal reference: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/a ... /5945/1272


http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1 ... ticks.html

That is only common sense. If you can get someone to do what you want them to do willingly it beats threatening or flogging them.

ruveyn

A strange issue.

A fundamental rule of political science is that the way to get a group of people to embrace something is to get them to internally accept the value it is based upon.

Frequently, this utilizes propaganda.

Indoctrinate the masses on the value of hard work and sacrifice and they will do so willingly because they internally believe that value.

Otherwise, you have to use the threat of force to make it happen, and even then, most will do only the absolute minimum required of them.

This is a dangerous duality.

Raise a the young with good values that reinforce independence and liberty, and you get good results and a free population.

Raise the young to believe that tight government control and regulation is a good thing, and you get a society that is a police state full of mindless drones afraid to think for themselves.

Different outcomes, same tactic.

sticks are better than carrots if you have harnessed a team of termites.

Beat them with the carrot.

well, carrots are certainly more nutritious...

but sometimes, you have to start by getting the mule's attention...

I think some people learn better with carrots. Unfortunately, stick work better with the majority.