Indirect Punishment Research Articles

The bioSocial Cognitive Theory of Eating (bSCT-e): Applying and Elaborating on a Biopsychosocial Substance Use Theory for Food Addiction

Obesity rates are increasing globally, and food addiction (FA1) may be an important contributing factor but there is a lack of understanding of the key psychological mechanisms that contribute to FA. The bioSocial Cognitive Theory (bSCT) proposes that substance use is predicted by biologically based personality traits and their influence on social cognitive mechanisms. While validated in substance use, bSCT has not been applied to a behavioural or non-substance addiction. However, the bSCT does not include a negative affective personality component, of which there is clear theoretical and empirical support as risk factors for FA. Thus, this study sought to test both the original bSCT model and an elaborated version related to eating (bSCT-e) that included direct and indirect punishment sensitivity pathways to identify the individual risk factors of FA.Data were collected from 204 university students (75.5% female; Mage = 24.82, SD = 9.17) via an online survey. Both original bSCT and bSCT-e models provided a good fit to the data, with the latter providing slightly better fit and accounting for more variance in FA. The findings suggest that individuals who are more reward driven and punishment sensitive hold exaggerated beliefs about the reinforcing and emotion regulation effects of eating, which may undermine eating control and increase risk of FA. This study provides potential new insights into the complex biopsychosocial mechanisms of FA, and points to potential intervention targets.

Rethinking climate agreements: self-enforcing strategies for emission reduction through sanctions

Although climate change is expected to cause significant negative impacts, climate treaties give hope for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, potentially leading to less severe climate change. However, climate change is a public bad: If each country aims to maximize its own benefit, some countries might free ride and continue to emit GHGs. Consequently, climate treaties have seen limited success, and a central question is how future treaties can achieve GHG emission reduction and also be ‘self-enforcing’—where participating countries have no incentive to withdraw or modify their contributions. Here we examine a dynamic negotiation process involving multiple countries, each deciding whether and when to join the agreement and whether to penalize non-participants. In particular, we distinguish between (1) indirect punishment, in which countries invest less in emission reduction in response to non-compliance of other countries, and (2) direct punishment, in which countries impose sanctions, such as punitive tariffs, against countries that do not comply. We analyze the negotiation process using evolutionary game theory. We show that how the two types of punishment are implemented greatly affects the agreement’s outcome. In particular, an efficient combination of the punishments could lead to more desirable self-enforcing agreements. These findings indicate that integrating punitive measures with an effective negotiation framework could result in more desirable climate agreements.

Teaching Norms: Direct Evidence of Parental Transmission

Abstract We examine the educative role played by parents in social norm transmission. Using a field experiment, we study whether parents enforce and comply more with norms when their children are present compared to when they are not. We compare similar parents when or after they drop off or pick up their children at school. We find that parents accompanying children, in contrast to parents alone, are more likely to punish norm violators and to provide help to strangers when there is no violation. They also tend to substitute more direct punishment with withholding help as a means of indirect punishment.

What Motivates Direct and Indirect Punishment?

Abstract. Punishment represents a key mechanism to deter norm violations and is motivated by retribution and/or general deterrence. Retribution-motivated punishment is tailored to offense severity, whereas deterrence-motivated punishment is tailored to different factors, including punishment observability. This study aimed to replicate and extend prior work by testing how offense severity and punishment observability motivate direct, confrontational punishment versus indirect, covert punishment. Participants ( N = 308) read vignettes describing offenses with varying severity (high vs. low) and punishment observability (high vs. low). We then assessed their punishment tendencies – overall, direct, and indirect – and their endorsement of retribution and deterrence motives. Findings supported a “strong version” of intuitive retributivism. Manipulating retribution-relevant information consistently influenced punishment: participants reported stronger overall, direct, and indirect punishment tendencies when severity was high (vs. low). Self-reported deterrence (but not retribution) motives positively related to overall, direct, and indirect punishment tendencies. However, manipulating deterrence-relevant information did not influence punishment.

Ecological features benefiting sustainable harvesters in socio-ecological systems: a case study of Swiftlets in Malaysia.

A major challenge in biodiversity management is overharvesting by unsustainable harvesters. If a scenario could be created where sustainable harvesters benefit more than the unsustainable ones, even in the short term, the issue of overharvesting would be solved. Everyone would then follow the lead of sustainable harvesters. However, creating such a scenario is not an easy task; the difficulty is intensified if the habitat is open access and there is no property rights system. Swiftlets in Sarawak, Malaysia, present a special case where sustainable harvesters are believed to be more beneficial than unsustainable harvesters. Edible nests built by adult Swiftlets are used as ingredients for a traditional luxurious soup in Chinese cuisine. A rise in nest prices has increased the instances of unsustainable harvesters wrongfully collecting nests along with the eggs and fledglings, which are then abandoned. Swiftlets live in caves and build nests on cave ceilings. It is known that Swiftlets escape from cave ceilings when these harvesters take the nests, never to return to the same place. This ecological feature appears to work as the Swiftlet's indirect punishment against unsustainable harvesters. This study constructs a stage-structured population model and examines the effect of property rights and the indirect punishment by Swiftlets on the population dynamics of the bird, and on the economic return of both sustainable and unsustainable harvesters. Our findings are as follows: the indirect punishment by Swiftlets provides sustainable harvesters a higher short-term return than unsustainable harvesters under the property rights system, as long as Swiftlets return to their original cave after escaping from the unsustainable harvesters. While previous studies regarding the management of the commons have stressed the importance of rules and regulations for sustainable harvesting without considering the ecological uniqueness of each species, this study suggests that ecological exploration and the discovery of ecological features are also essential for designing a sustainable framework.

Survivor’s dilemma: The evolution of cooperation in volatile environments

The volatility of an environment significantly impacts cooperative behavior. In environments where viability-threatening events occur on a shorter timescale than reproduction, it is reasonable to measure the costs and benefits of cooperation in terms of their direct effect on survival probability. Then, the number of offspring increases with lifespan. With such a model, is it possible for cooperation to be evolutionarily stable, and how does cooperation depend on the benefit and cost of such interactions, and the volatility of the environment? In this paper, we develop an N-player survivor’s dilemma in which prisoner’s dilemma payoffs in an iteration are survival rates, and expected lifespan is the measure of reproductive fitness. We investigate cost, benefit, and volatility parameter ranges where various cooperative behaviors may occur. We observe that free-riding results in indirect punishment as the cheated partner’s early death leaves the defector vulnerable. For 2- and 3-player versions of the game, we identify parameter regions where the repeated game becomes equivalent to a Harmony, Stag Hunt, or Prisoner’s Dilemma static game and discuss evolutionary stability. We find that with two individuals, the initial fraction of cooperators necessary for cooperation to be selected for decreases as the benefit to cost ratio increases and as environmental volatility decreases. With the presence of a third individual, there also exists a parameter region where cooperation can invade an initially all-defecting population.

Direct and indirect punishment of norm violations in daily life

Across societies, humans punish norm violations. To date, research on the antecedents and consequences of punishment has largely relied upon agent-based modeling and laboratory experiments. Here, we report a longitudinal study documenting punishment responses to norm violations in daily life (k = 1507; N = 257) and test pre-registered hypotheses about the antecedents of direct punishment (i.e., confrontation) and indirect punishment (i.e., gossip and social exclusion). We find that people use confrontation versus gossip in a context-sensitive manner. Confrontation is more likely when punishers have been personally victimized, have more power, and value offenders more. Gossip is more likely when norm violations are severe and when punishers have less power, value offenders less, and experience disgust. Findings reveal a complex punishment psychology that weighs the benefits of adjusting others’ behavior against the risks of retaliation.

“I Snapchat and Drive!” A mixed methods approach examining snapchat use while driving and deterrent perceptions among young adults

This research utilised a qualitative and quantitative study to examine a sample of young drivers’ perceptions of deterrent forces, both legal and non-legal, for the behaviour of phone use while driving. First, focus groups were conducted with 60 drivers between the ages of 17 and 25 years who resided in Queensland, Australia. This qualitative study utilised an inductive approach to elicit participants’ perceptions without omitting important ideas. Legal sanctions were associated with low perceptions of enforcement certainty. Meanwhile, the only non-legal sanction to emerge was the concept of “safety”; many participants were deterred from using their phone while driving for fear of injury or death to themselves or others. The types of social media most likely to be engaged in were explored and sending videos or photos via the application Snapchat emerged as the most common social media application used among the sample. Consequently, the subsequent quantitative study focused on deterrent forces associated with Snapchat use while driving. A survey was utilised with a separate sample of young drivers aged 17–25 years (n = 503). The impact of the threat of legal sanctions on Snapchat use while driving was examined through classical deterrence theory and Stafford and Warr’s (1993) reconceptualised deterrence theory. The non-legal factor of perceived safety was also included in the quantitative study. None of the classical deterrence variables (e.g., certainty, severity and swiftness) reached significance while all the reconceptualised deterrence variables (e.g., direct and indirect punishment and punishment avoidance), as well as perceived safety, were significant predictors of Snapchat use while driving. It is suggested that perceptions of certainty of apprehension need to be increased for phone use while driving. The findings show the current impact of deterrent initiatives for phone use while driving as well as provide the first examination of deterrents for the specific mobile phone behaviour of Snapchat use while driving.

Does getting away with it count? An application of stafford and warr’s reconceptualised model of deterrence to drink driving

Drink drivers continue to be disproportionately represented in road mortalities and morbidities. Given these costs, countermeasures that effectively reduce the behaviour (and its consequences) are imperative. Research has produced inconsistent findings regarding the deterrent effects of some countermeasures on drink driving behaviour, namely legal sanctions, suggesting other factors may be more influential. This study aimed to determine which deterrence measures based on Classical Deterrence Theory and Stafford and Warr’s (1993) reconceptualised model of deterrence influence the propensity to drink and drive over the legal blood alcohol content limit of 0.05. In total, 1257 Australian drivers aged from 16 to 85 years completed a questionnaire assessing their self-reported drink driving behaviour and perceptions of legal sanctions. Consistent with previous research, past experiences of direct punishment avoidance was the most significant predictor of drink driving. Additionally, perceptions of personal certainty of apprehension were a significant (albeit weak) negative predictor of drink driving. Counterintuitively, experiences of indirect punishment were predictive of self-reported drink driving. Similarly, penalty severity produced mixed results as those who considered a penalty would be severe were less likely to drink and drive. However those that considered the penalty would cause a considerable impact on their lives, were more likely to drink and drive. Taken together, these findings suggest that while the threat of apprehension and punishment may influence self-reported drink driving behaviours, committing and offence while avoiding detection is a significant influence upon ongoing offending. This paper will further elaborate on the findings in regards to developing salient and effective deterrents that produce a lasting effect.

Direct and indirect punishment among strangers in the field.

Many interactions in modern human societies are among strangers. Explaining cooperation in such interactions is challenging. The two most prominent explanations critically depend on individuals' willingness to punish defectors: In models of direct punishment, individuals punish antisocial behavior at a personal cost, whereas in models of indirect reciprocity, they punish indirectly by withholding rewards. We investigate these competing explanations in a field experiment with real-life interactions among strangers. We find clear evidence of both direct and indirect punishment. Direct punishment is not rewarded by strangers and, in line with models of indirect reciprocity, is crowded out by indirect punishment opportunities. The existence of direct and indirect punishment in daily life indicates the importance of both means for understanding the evolution of cooperation.

Attack Prevention for Collaborative Spectrum Sensing in Cognitive Radio Networks

Collaborative spectrum sensing can significantly improve the detection performance of secondary unlicensed users (SUs). However, the performance of collaborative sensing is vulnerable to sensing data falsification attacks, where malicious SUs (attackers) submit manipulated sensing reports to mislead the fusion center's decision on spectrum occupancy. Moreover, attackers may not follow the fusion center's decision regarding their spectrum access. This paper considers a challenging attack scenario where multiple rational attackers overhear all honest SUs' sensing reports and cooperatively maximize attackers' aggregate spectrum utilization. We show that, without attack-prevention mechanisms, honest SUs are unable to transmit over the licensed spectrum, and they may further be penalized by the primary user for collisions due to attackers' aggressive transmissions. To prevent such attacks, we propose two novel attack-prevention mechanisms with direct and indirect punishments. The key idea is to identify collisions to the primary user that should not happen if all SUs follow the fusion center's decision. Unlike prior work, the proposed simple mechanisms do not require the fusion center to identify and exclude attackers. The direct punishment can effectively prevent all attackers from behaving maliciously. The indirect punishment is easier to implement and can prevent attacks when the attackers care enough about their long-term reward.

Indirect Punishment and Generosity Toward Strangers

Many people incur costs to reward strangers who have been kind to others. Theoretical and experimental evidence suggests that such "indirect rewarding" sustains cooperation between unrelated humans. Its emergence is surprising, because rewarders incur costs but receive no immediate benefits. It can prevail in the long run only if rewarders earn higher payoffs than "defectors" who ignore strangers' kindness. We provide experimental evidence regarding the payoffs received by individuals who employ these and other strategies, such as "indirect punishment," by imposing costs on unkind strangers. We find that if unkind strangers cannot be punished, defection earns most. If they can be punished, however, then indirect rewarding earns most. Indirect punishment plays this important role, even if it gives a low payoff and is rarely implemented.

Close Reading at a Distance: The African Americanization ofBleak House

On 1 October 1851, in Syracuse, New York, a man named Jerry was arrested by federal marshals acting under the authority of the Fugitive Slave Act. Within hours, Jerry was freed by a crowd and, several days later, surreptitiously transported to Canada and freedom. Two years after these events, the defendants in what became known as the Jerry rescue case still had not been tried. Protesting what it saw as “the indirect punishment of persons obnoxious to the Government, whom it does not hope to convict,” the abolitionist paper The Liberator exclaimed, “Had we an American Dickens, this might afford a text for a new Bleak House, quite as suggestive as the Court of Chancery itself. But, le bon temps viendra! Better times will come.”1 And so better times did come, indeed had already come, if better times mean new Bleak Houses, Americanized and even African Americanized Bleak Houses. Antebellum African Americans and abolitionists seized upon Bleak House and put it to work in a surprising number of ways, from brief if suggestive references such as this one to reprintings of the novel in whole or in part and from the literal reenactment of one of its events to an actual rewriting of the novel in something like the way The Liberator envisioned. These allusions and appropriations form part of the larger deployment of British literature in antebellum antislavery discourse and the period’s

The Hyper-Criminalization of Black and Latino Male Youth in the Era of Mass Incarceration

This article discusses how Black and Latino youth labeled “deviant” are impacted by criminalization after coming in contact with the juvenile justice system. The findings are based on ethnographic interviews I conducted in the San Francisco Bay Area from 2002–2005. From this data I argue that Black and Latino youth are further stigmatized and “hyper-criminalized” upon entering the juvenile justice system even when the majority are arrested for non-violent offenses. Non-violent juvenile offenders thus experience the full force of direct and indirect punishment and criminalization traditionally aimed at violent offenders. Furthermore, in a time when punitive crime control measures have drastically increased, youth of color not only experience this hyper-criminalization from criminal justice institutions but also from non-criminal justice structures traditionally intended to nurture: the school, the family, and the community center. Ultimately, in the era of mass incarceration, a “youth control complex” created by a network of racialized criminalization and punishment deployed from various institutions of control and socialization has formed to manage, control, and incapacitate Black and Latino youth.