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Ethical Free Riding: When Honest People Find Dishonest Partners.

ABSTRACT: Corruption is often the product of coordinated rule violations. Here, we investigated how such corrupt collaboration emerges and spreads when people can choose their partners versus when they cannot. Participants were assigned a partner and could increase their payoff by coordinated lying. After several interactions, they were either free to choose whether to stay with or switch their partner or forced to stay with or switch their partner. Results reveal that both dishonest and honest people exploit the freedom to choose a partner. Dishonest people seek a partner who will also lie-a "partner in crime." Honest people, by contrast, engage in ethical free riding: They refrain from lying but also from leaving dishonest partners, taking advantage of their partners' lies. We conclude that to curb collaborative corruption, relying on people's honesty is insufficient. Encouraging honest individuals not to engage in ethical free riding is essential.

SUBMITTER: Gross J

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6291908 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Ethical Free Riding: When Honest People Find Dishonest Partners.

Gross Jörg J Leib Margarita M Offerman Theo T Shalvi Shaul S

Psychological science 20181016 12

Corruption is often the product of coordinated rule violations. Here, we investigated how such corrupt collaboration emerges and spreads when people can choose their partners versus when they cannot. Participants were assigned a partner and could increase their payoff by coordinated lying. After several interactions, they were either free to choose whether to stay with or switch their partner or forced to stay with or switch their partner. Results reveal that both dishonest and honest people exp ...[more]

PMID: 30325707

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Project description:BackgroundThe reliability of signals is a key issue in the study of animal communication. Both empirical work and theoretical models show that communication need not be entirely honest, and thus signals can be deceitful. Aggressive communication appears to be a prime candidate for such deceitful communication, because bluffing has been described in several species. Bluffing in these situations are supposed to be maintained by frequency dependent selection where the fitness of a given type depends on the frequencies of the other types in the population. Previous efforts to model such a scenario through individual based simulations have yielded conflicting results. Studies have either found a rich set of polymorphic strategies including the traditional cheating scenario or found none. Thus, the modelling assumptions responsible for these diverging conclusions remain unclear.ResultsIn this study, I investigate the effects of four modelling assumptions: the role of an extended strategy set, the initial population composition (seeding), the differences in pay-offs and finally different parameter spaces. I investigate the effects of these factors on the evolvability of both honest and mixed cheating strategies. I show that both honest and cheating equilibria readily evolve and that the investigated parameter range and the seeding of the starting populations have the greatest influence on the outcome.ConclusionsBoth honest signalling and polymorphic cheating equilibria are more likely to evolve from a narrow strategy set than from a random mixture of strategies. A large potential strategy set is not a setback for the evolution of communication -honest or cheating- as long as the initial population is seeded with only a few strategies. In addition, different sections of the parameter space show consistently different behaviour. Thus, frequency dependent selection has the potential to explain various empirical observations that show consistent differences in aggressive behaviour.

Dataset Information

Ethical Free Riding: When Honest People Find Dishonest Partners.

Publications

Ethical Free Riding: When Honest People Find Dishonest Partners.

Similar Datasets

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