Collective Punishment for Selfish Group Decisions
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: ABSTRACT When a group decision benefits its members at others' expense, external observers often cannot identify each member's responsibility, while punishing the entire group may harm members who did not support the decision. This paper uses a modified dictator game with third‐party punishment to study how responsibility transparency and organizational decision rules shape third parties' willingness to impose collective punishment. In the experiment, three decision makers choose between a fair allocation and an unfair allocation that gives them a small additional payoff while imposing a large negative externality on a receiver. Their individual choices are transformed into the team's outcome through different organizational rules, and a third party can pay a cost to punish the entire team. We find that third parties are willing to punish groups that implement the unfair allocation, even when punishment affects members who did not support it. Punishment increases with the actual or inferred size of responsibility. When the number of responsible members is unobservable, third parties still use organizational decision rules to infer responsibility distribution. We also find that the threat of collective punishment reduces decision makers' propensity to support this allocation. The results show that collective punishment, despite its normative cost of harming non‐responsible members, can serve as a mechanism of norm enforcement and deterrence in group decision‐making environments where responsibility may be opaque. Trial Registration Not applicable. This study is not a clinical trial.
DOI: 10.1002/ise3.70043
Author: Chenxi Zhang
Institution: Shanghai University of Finance and Economics
Language: English
Subfield: Economics and Econometrics
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $2,600
OpenAlex ID: W7225647094