Theoretical and empirical studies have generally weighed the effect of peer punishment and pool punishment for sanctioning free riders separately. However, these sanctioning mechanisms often pose a puzzling tradeoff between efficiency and stability in detecting and punishing free riders. Here,...

Social dilemmas are among the most puzzling issues in the biological and social sciences. Extensive theoretical efforts have been made in various realms such as economics, biology, mathematics, and even physics to figure out solution mechanisms to the dilemma in recent decades. Although...

Despite the accumulation of research on indirect reciprocity over the past 30 years and the publication of over 100,000 related papers, there are still many issues to be addressed. Here, we look back on the research that has been done on indirect reciprocity and identify the issues that have...

The strategy method is often used in public goods games to measure an individual's willingness to cooperate depending on the level of cooperation by their groupmates (conditional cooperation). However, while the strategy method is informative, it risks conflating confusion with a desire for fair...

Indirect reciprocity is one of the major mechanisms driving the evolution of cooperation in human societies. There are two types of indirect reciprocity: upstream and downstream reciprocity. Cooperation in downstream reciprocity follows the pattern ‘You helped someone, and I will help you’,...

Intensive studies on indirect reciprocity have explored rational assessment rules for maintaining cooperation and several have demonstrated the effects of the stern-judging rule. Uchida and Sasaki demonstrated that the stern-judging rule is not suitable for maintaining cooperative regimes in...