Selfish punishers: An experimental investigation of designated punishment behavior in public goods

•Designated punishers mitigate free riding while contributing less than non-punishers.•Punishers undercut their own enforced norm.•The discrepancy between punishers and non-punishers grows over time.

We show that a second-party punisher forces his peers to contribute to a public good while contributing significantly less himself. This effect increased over time and casts doubt on the prevalent prosocial interpretation of (designated) punishment behavior.