What is it about?
Institutions explain why humans exhibit such high levels of cooperation compared to other species. From small communities to large nation-states, they promote cooperation by rewarding prosocial conduct and punishing acts of selfishness. Yet institutions are themselves cooperative enterprises—their effectiveness depends on people’s willingness to participate in assemblies and resist corruption. How, then, can institutions promote cooperation when they rely on it? We show that institutions can leverage the power of reputation. Reputation encourages individuals to contribute to institutions, which transform contributions into new incentives. If generated efficiently, these institutional incentives unlock cooperation in scenarios where reputation alone would be insufficient. Thus, institutions can transform initially weak cooperative tendencies into strong incentives for cooperation.
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This page is a summary of: The social leverage effect: Institutions transform weak reputation effects into strong incentives for cooperation, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, December 2024, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2408802121.
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