14 DAY TRIAL // Scientists studying human behavior learned that punishment among individuals in the same group could be a very effective way of promoting cooperation, rather than appealing to an individual's consciousness. Namely, if other members of the group have the capacity to sanction those who stray from the “path” and draw everyone else back, the entire group is apparently able to function better.
Experts hypothesize that this happens because those who do their jobs well in a group are very likely to punish those who do not fulfill their allotted amount of work, especially if the group – such as a company department – is judged as a whole. Free riders are weeded out, so one could say that the group is able to optimize itself, for maximum performance.
“We would suggest that having the ability to monitor the contribution of others can be beneficial to those working together frequently. If team members can observe each other's efforts, then they can impose sanctions on those who shirk, as it may encourage them to pull their weight,” says University of Nottingham professor Martin Sefton.
“We found there was definitely an emotional side to the punishment, targeted to the people who contribute little to the group. Even in the last play of the game people were willing to punish 'free riders,' even though there would be no future benefit. It suggests that they were punishing for an emotional reason and willing to incur a financial cost to get even or teach the person a lesson in some way,” he adds, in the study published in the journal Science.
The findings could be applied by behavior psychologists, when assessing the efficiency that workers displayed during the day. This area of group dynamics study was very interesting, especially given the fact that this aforementioned survey nullified previous studies, which claimed that punishment was not effective in such conditions. However, those papers had been elaborated over a short time frame, which was not the case here.