Altruisitic Punishment and the Poker Player’s Perspective

An article in today’s Washington Post discussed how the emotional response to the current round of government rescue plans may play a role in causing some of them to fail, even if from a practical, objective perspective they should work. There was a very interesting section in which one economist discussed the results of a game developed to test the concept of altruistic punishment in general (not in the context of the current environment) and here’s what happened:

Four people are given $5 apiece. They are then told to contribute one after the other to a common pot. If the amount in the pot totals $12, they are informed, each player will get a $6 bonus. In an ideal world, each player would give $3, collect the bonus and go home with $8. The temptation, however, is to free-ride -- to contribute less than your share and hope someone else gives more.

Experiments show that when players No. 1, 2 and 3 contribute only a total of $7 -- far less than their share -- No. 4 faces a dilemma: If the player puts in the whole $5, the common pot will reach $12. A purely rational, selfish player would pony up the $5 in order to get the bonus, because it is always better to go home with $6 than with $5.

But the experiments show that large numbers of people refuse to do the "rational" thing. Seeing that they are being played for suckers, they contribute nothing. They forgo the extra $1 in order to punish the selfish players who came before them.

So, what’s your play?

For me, I guess I view this situation and life in general as most comparable to a cash game. If I come out ahead, that’s the play to make. It’s no skin off my nose if someone else comes out a little farther ahead in any given situation. I may note that they are a douchebag and keep that in mind for potential future situations, but I’m not going to pass up a guaranteed win just because someone else might win more.

Now, back to our usual programming.