NORM ENFORCEMENT: ANGER, INDIGNATION, OR RECIPROCITY?
The editor in charge of this paper was Orazio Attanasio.
Acknowledgments: We thank Marco Castillo, Jeremy Clark, Carolyn Craven, Herb Gintis, Corinna Noelke, Louis Putterman, David Sloan Wilson, the editor, and four thoughtful referees for their comments on earlier drafts, as well as seminar and conference participants at the European University Institute, the Economic Science Association, the Canadian Economics Association, and Middlebury College. We also thank Okomboli Ong’ong’a for research assistance, and Middlebury College and the National Science Foundation (SES-CAREER 0092953) for financial support.
Abstract
The enforcement of social norms often requires that unaffected third parties sanction offenders. Given the renewed interest of economists in norms, the literature on third-party punishment is surprisingly thin. In this paper, we report the results of an experiment designed to replicate the anger-based punishment of directly affected second parties and evaluate two distinct explanations for third-party punishment: indignation and group reciprocity. We find evidence in favor of both, with the caveat that the incidence of indignation-driven sanctions is perhaps smaller than earlier studies have hinted. Furthermore, our results suggest that second parties use sanctions to promote conformism while third parties intervene primarily to promote efficiency.
