Absence Of Punishment Research Articles

Rent-Seeking, Hierarchy and Centralization: Why the Soviet Union Collapsed So Fast and What it Means for Market Economies

Opening of the archives confirmed that the Soviet Union was a hierarchical economy driven by planning, not a rent-seeking society. Rent-seeking could not govern the classical socialist society because lower-level officials could not trust their superiors to collaborate. Individual incentives would have favored widespread rent-seeking in the absence of punishment, therefore loosening of control during perestroika infused the system with rent-seeking and triggered the collapse of the planned economy. Rent-seeking drives decentralization of a hierarchical economy but centralization of a free economy, suggesting a tipping point between the two systems.

Rethinking amnesties: atrocity, accountability and impunity in post-conflict societies

The notion of accountability that is propagated in transitional justice often appears limited to demands for the prosecution and imprisonment of those who have been involved in serious human rights violations. Amnesties, widely understood as the absence of punishment for wrongdoing, are in turn considered by many scholars and activists as an example par excellence of the kind of Faustian pacts which are made in the name of political expediency in transitions from conflict. Drawing from a range of interdisciplinary literature, as well as research completed by the authors in a number of societies with a violent past, this paper uses amnesties as a case study to argue for a more rounded interrogation of the notion of accountability in transitional justice. The paper charts the various forms of intersecting accountability which both shape and delimit amnesties at key ‘moments’ concerning their remit, introduction and operation. The paper concludes that the legalistic view of amnesties as equating to impunity and retribution as accountability is inaccurate and misleading. It argues that a broader perspective of accountability speaks directly to the capacity for amnesties to play a more constructive role in post-conflict justice and peacemaking.

Strong reciprocity, social structure, and the evolution of fair allocations in a simulated ultimatum game

Cooperation has long been an enigma in the life and social sciences. A possible explanation for the phenomenon is the recently developed idea of strong reciprocity in which agents altruistically reward those that cooperate and altruistically punish those that do not. The acts are altruistic in the sense that when agents punish or reward they incur a cost but receive no material benefit. Both experimentalists and modelers have focused primarily on third-party altruistic punishment mechanisms yet rarely discuss how they establish a cost for punishing. In this study I used agent-based modelling to test the ability of altruistic punishment to elicit fair allocations in a simulated ultimatum game. In particular I simulated agents with the ability to punish neighbors whose offers were deemed too low while systematically varying the ratio of costs between punisher and punishee. Despite several studies in which strong reciprocity is shown to induce cooperation, altruistic punishment failed to evolve fair allocations in these simulations. However, outcomes were highly dependant on the spatial structure of agents in the simulations and fair allocations did evolve in a linearly structured population even in the absence of punishment. As the number of immediate neighbors increased, mean offers fell but still remained significantly greater than that predicted by standard economic theory. Only when social structure was removed, and agents could interact with any other agent in the population, did offers in the simulated ultimatum game match theoretical expectations.

Visual search and the importance of time in complex decision making by bees

Psychophysicists studying decision making in animals have overwhelmingly focused on choice accuracy, not speed. Results from human visual search, however, show that there might be a tight link between the two. Here we review both visual-sensory and cognitive mechanisms that affect decision speed in flower visiting bees. We show that decision times are affected by contrast of targets and background, by similarity between targets and distractors, numbers of distractors present in a scene, illuminating light intensity, presence or absence of punishment, and complexity of tasks. We explore between-individual and within-individual speed-accuracy tradeoffs, and show that bees resort to highly dynamic strategies when solving visual search tasks. Where possible, we attempt to link the observed search behaviour to the temporal and spatial properties of neuronal circuits underlying visual object detection. We demonstrate that natural foraging speed may not only be limited by factors such as food item density, flight energetics and scramble competition, as often implied. Our results show that understanding the behavioural ecology of foraging can substantially gain from knowledge about mechanisms of visual information processing.

Innocent Deaths and Regulatory Failure: A Case Study of Change in the Absence of Punishment

The Mistral fan deaths were yet another example of corporate harm which failed to result in criminal prosecution, or indeed any enforcement activity. Rather than analyse reasons for this failure, this paper traces what occurs in the absence of punishment. The study traces the framing of contributing factors uncovered through coronial investigation process, the compilation of recommendations for regulatory change and the fate of those recommendations once they entered the regulatory arena. The paper shows how the public outcry was translated by the coroner into issues of bureaucratic failure of the regulators, rather than the need for demanding punishment. Such an approach had some successes with certain reforms to the regulatory system made. However, general regulatory concerns revolved around the perceived failure of prescriptive regulatory regimes and the need to respond to government demands for free market policies and cost efficient regulation. Such concerns could either magnify, distort or ignore the lessons learnt from the deaths. The conclusions drawn demonstrate the importance of institutions which emphasize the value of social goals such as human health while questioning government enthusiasm for policies which give free rein to free market ideologies and economic evaluation of social regulation.

THE EFFECT OF PUNISHMENT ON FREE‐OPERANT CHOICE BEHAVIOR IN HUMANS

During Phase I, three female human subjects pressed a button for monetary reinforcement in five variable-interval schedules specifying different frequencies of reinforcement. On alternate days, responding was also punished (by subtracting money) according to a variable-ratio 34 schedule. In the absence of punishment, response rates conformed to Herrnstein's equation for single variable-interval schedules. Punishment suppressed responding at all frequencies of reinforcement. This was reflected in a change in the values of both constants in Herrnstein's equation: the value of the theoretical maximum response-rate parameter was reduced, and the parameter describing the reinforcement frequency corresponding to the half-maximal response rate was elevated. During Phase II, the same five schedules (A) were in operation (without punishment), but in addition, a concurrent variable-interval schedule (B) of standard reinforcement frequency was introduced. On alternate days, responding in Component B was punished according to a variable-ratio 34 schedule. In the absence of punishment, absolute response rates conformed to equations proposed by Herrnstein to describe performance in concurrent schedules; the ratios of the response rates in the two components and the ratios of the times spent in the two components conformed to the Matching Law. When responding in Component B was punished, response rates in Component B were reduced and those in Component A were elevated, these changes being reflected in distortions of the matching relationship.

Early Toilet Training

In their superb study of toilet training (Pediatrics 60:170, August 1977), deVries and deVries reminded me that I had heard of early toilet training before. Accordingly, inquiries among our patient population here at Montefiore revealed that this process was not uncommon among Jamaicans when they resided in Jamaica. I found no instances of early toilet training among Jamaicans after they moved to the United States, even though they had previously done it in Jamaica. The methods used were essentially the same as those used by the Digos: the use of sounds, endearments, reward, and the absence of punishment.

EFFECT OF VARIABLE‐INTERVAL PUNISHMENT ON THE BEHAVIOR OF HUMANS IN VARIABLE‐INTERVAL SCHEDULES OF MONETARY REINFORCEMENT1

One male and three female human subjects pressed a button for monetary reinforcement under a range of variable-interval schedules specifying different frequencies of reinforcement. On alternate days, responding was also punished (by subtraction of money) according to a variable-interval 170-second schedule. In the absence of punishment, the rate of responding was an increasing negatively accelerated function of reinforcement frequency, as predicted by Herrnstein's equation. The effect of the punishment schedule was to suppress responding under lower frequencies of reinforcement; responding under higher reinforcement frequencies was much less affected. This was reflected in an increase in the value of K(H) (the constant expressing the reinforcement frequency corresponding to the half-maximal response rate), whereas there was no significant change in the value of R(max) (the constant expressing the maximum response rate). Previous results had shown that variable-ratio punishment resulted in a change in the values of both constants (Bradshaw, Szabadi, and Bevan, 1977). The results of the present study were consistent with the concept that the suppressive effects of punishment on responding depend on the nature of the punishment schedule.

EFFECT OF PUNISHMENT ON HUMAN VARIABLE‐INTERVAL PERFORMANCE

Three female human subjects pressed a button for monetary reinforcement in a range of variable-interval schedules specifying different frequencies of reinforcement. On alternate days, responding was also punished (by subtracting money) according to a variable-ratio 34 schedule. In the absence of punishment, rate of responding was an increasing negatively accelerated function of reinforcement frequency; the relationship between response rate and reinforcement frequency conformed to Herrnstein's equation. The effect of the punishment schedule was to suppress responding at all frequencies of reinforcement. This was reflected in a change in the values of both constants in Herrnstein's equation: the value of the theoretical maximum response-rate parameter was reduced, while the parameter describing the reinforcement frequency corresponding to the half-maximal response rate was increased.

Punished and unpunished responding in multiple variable-interval schedules.

The performance of rats trained on multiple variable-interval schedules was examined before, during, and after punishment. The same linear function related relative response rates to relative density of reinforcement both in the presence and absence of punishment. Equal relative suppression was seen in both the high and low reinforcement density components. The intercept value of the function was zero. Each component of the schedule was programmed on a separate lever: thus during any component, there was an opportunity for responses on the nonoperative lever (errors). The proportions of these errors declined to a near-zero value during punishment and did not regain their prepunishment values after punishment was removed, suggesting that some discrimination learning occurred during punishment. Recovery of response rate during punishment was seen only where a greater-than-zero probability of reinforcement was associated with the response.

Punishment of an extinguishing shock-avoidance response by time-out from positive reinforcement.

Two experiments were conducted to determine the effects of punishment by time-out from positive reinforcement on the extinction of discriminated shock-avoidance responding. Subjects were trained initially to bar press for food on an intermittent schedule of reinforcement and, concurrently, to avoid shock at the onset of a warning signal. Experiment I compared avoidance extinction performance under no punishment and when avoidance responding resulted in a 30-sec TO from reinforced appetitive responding. In Exp II, the contingent use of TO punishment was compared with its random, or noncontingent use. The results of both experiments showed that in the absence of punishment, avoidance extinction was characterized by short latencies and nearly 100% avoidance responding. Avoidance responding in extinction was little affected by noncontingent TO punishment. When TO was made contingent upon avoidance responding, however, avoidance latencies immediately increased and the frequency of avoidance responses subsequently decreased to zero.