From good institutions to generous citizens: Top-down incentives to cooperate promote subsequent prosociality but not norm enforcement

- How do formal institutions shape prosociality & 3rd party punishment of selfishness?
- S1 found quality of daily-life institutions predicted prosociality but not punishment.
- S2 manipulated institutional quality using top-down sanctions in a Public Goods Game.
- Top-down sanctions increased subsequent prosociality in a Dictator Game.
- Conversely there was no direct effect of sanctions on subsequent 3rd party punishment.

What makes people willing to pay costs to help others, and to punish others' selfishness? Why does the extent of such behaviors vary markedly across cultures? To shed light on these questions, we explore the role of formal institutions in shaping individuals' prosociality and punishment. In Study 1 (N = 707), American participants who reported living under higher quality cooperation-enforcing institutions (police and courts) gave significantly more in a Dictator Game (DG), but did not punish significantly more in a Third-Party Punishment Game (TPPG). In Study 1R (N = 1705), we replicated the positive relationship between reported institutional quality and DG giving observed in Study 1. In Study 2 (N = 516), we experimentally manipulated institutional quality in a repeated Public Goods Game with a centralized punishment institution. Consistent with the correlational results of Study 1 and 1R, we found that centralized punishment led to significantly more prosociality in a subsequent DG compared to a no-punishment control, but had no significant direct effect on subsequent TPPG punishment (only an indirect effect via increased DG giving). Thus we present convergent evidence that the quality of institutions one is exposed to “spills over” to subsequent prosociality but not punishment. These findings support a theory of social heuristics, suggest boundary conditions on spillover effects of cooperation, and demonstrate the power of effective institutions for instilling habits of virtue and creating cultures of cooperation.