Altruistic Punishment Research Articles

Justice Sensitivity, Moral Emotions, and Altruistic Punishment

Why do some people engage in costly bystander intervention against norm violations without any personal direct or indirect gains? The present study investigates justice sensitivity and moral emotions as determinants of such altruistic punishment. We propose that the individual strength of other-directed justice concerns explains the willingness to altruistically punish wrongdoers. Moreover, we show that moral emotions provide the driving motivation and mediate the effect of justice sensitivity on altruistic punishment. Results of an experimental study (N = 91) show such a mediation effect for justice sensitivity from the beneficiary perspective, but not for observer and victim sensitivity. Further, the study investigates reasons for defaulted punishment. The results suggest that selfishness is not the only reason for not punishing. While people high in beneficiary and observer sensitivity rather argue based on moral reasons or admit to feel guilty for not engaging in altruistic punishment, people high in victim-sensitivity provide reasons mainly based on selfish concerns. Taken together, the study provides important insight in the motivations involved in altruistic punishment.

The Biology of Literary Affect: A Review Essay on Comeuppance. Costly Signaling, Altruistic Punishment, and Other Biological Components of Fiction by William Flesh

Review Essay by Thomas Carl WallWilliam Flesch, Comeuppance. Costly Signaling, Altruistic Punishment, and Other Biological Components of Fiction (Boston: Harvard UP, 2007), 264pp.

The Behavioral Logic of Collective Action: Partisans Cooperate and Punish More Than Nonpartisans

Laboratory experiments indicate that many people willingly contribute to public goods and punish free riders at a personal cost. We hypothesize that these individuals, called strong reciprocators, allow political parties to overcome collective action problems, thereby allowing those organizations to compete for scarce resources and to produce public goods for like-minded individuals. Using a series of laboratory games, we examine whether partisans contribute to public goods and punish free riders at a greater rate than nonpartisans. The results show that partisans are more likely than nonpartisans to contribute to public goods and to engage in costly punishment. Given the broad theoretical literature on altruistic punishment and group selection as well as our own formal evolutionary model, we hypothesize that it is being a partisan that makes an individual more likely to be a strong reciprocator and not vice versa.

Dishonesty invites costly third-party punishment

Third-party punishment for norm violators is an evolvable enforcer of social norms. The present study, involving two experiments, examined whether violations of honesty norms would induce costly third-party punishments. In both experiments, participants in the third-party role observed a protocol of the trust game, in which the trustee solicited the trustor to transfer his/her endowment by stating that the trustee would return x units from the total resource. Dishonesty was defined such that the trustee in fact returned fewer than x units. Participants were asked about their willingness to incur some cost to reduce the trustee's payoff. In Experiment 1, x was exactly half of the total resource. Participants were willing to incur more cost to punish the dishonest trustee than the trustee who allocated the resource unequally but had not sent the dishonest message. In Experiment 2, x was more than half of the total resource and the dishonest trustee allocated the total resource equally. Therefore, the dishonest trustee was not unfair in Experiment 2. Approximately half of the participants (16 of 30) punished the dishonest but fair trustee, while few participants (1 of 30) punished the fair trustee who had not sent the dishonest message. These experiments together demonstrated that participants were willing to incur some cost to punish honesty-norm violators, even when the participants themselves were not harmed by the norm violation.

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Punishers Benefit From Third-Party Punishment in Fish

In cases where uninvolved bystanders pay to punish defectors, this behavior has typically been interpreted in terms of group-level rather than individual-level benefits. Male cleaner fish, Labroides dimidiatus, punish their female partner if she cheats while inspecting model clients. Punishment promotes female cooperation and thereby yields direct foraging benefits to the male. Thus, third-party punishment can evolve via self-serving tendencies in a nonhuman species, and this finding may shed light on the evolutionary dynamics of more complex behavior in other animal species, including humans.

Supplemental Material for Impulsive Choice and Altruistic Punishment Are Correlated and Increase in Tandem With Serotonin Depletion

Supplemental Material for Impulsive Choice and Altruistic Punishment Are Correlated and Increase in Tandem With Serotonin Depletion

Co-Operative Punishment Cements Social Cohesion

Most current attempts to explain the evolution - through individual selection - of pro-social behavior (i.e. behavior that favors the group) that allows for cohesive societies among non related individuals, focus on altruistic punishment as its evolutionary driving force. The main theoretical problem facing this line of research is that in the exercise of altruistic punishment the benefits of punishment are enjoyed collectively while its costs are borne individually. We propose that social cohesion might be achieved by a form of punishment, widely practiced among humans and animals forming bands and engaging in mob beatings, which we call co-operative punishment. This kind of punishment is contingent upon - not independent from - the concurrent participation of other actors. Its costs can be divided among group members in the same way as its benefits are, and it will be favoured by evolution as long as the benefits exceed the costs. We show with computer simulations that co-operative punishment is an evolutionary stable strategy that performs better in evolutionary terms than non-cooperative punishment, and demonstrate the evolvability and sustainability of pro-social behavior in an environment where not necessarily all individuals participate in co-operative punishment. Co-operative punishment together with pro-social behavior produces a self reinforcing system that allows the emergence of a 'Darwinian Leviathan' that strengthens social institutions.

Moral emotions as determinants of third-party punishment: Anger, guilt, and the functions of altruistic sanctions

Abstract Third-party punishment has recently received attention as an explanation for human altruism. Feelings of anger in response to norm violations are assumed to motivate third-party sanctions, yet there is only sparse and indirect support for this idea. We investigated the impact of both anger and guilt feelings on third-party sanctions. In two studies both emotions were independently manipulated. Results show that anger and guilt independently constitute sufficient but not necessary causes of punishment. Low levels of punishment are observed only when neither emotion is elicited. We discuss the implications of these findings for the functions of altruistic sanctions.

Other-Regarding Preferences and Altruistic Punishment: A Darwinian Perspective

Altruistic punishment - the punishment of norm violators at one's own cost without material benefit - is frequently observed in experimental economics, field studies and in people's everyday life. The existence of this ostensibly irrational behavior is often linked to other-regarding preferences in humans, which relate a person's decision to her social environment. Economists have begun incorporating other-regarding preferences in their utility frameworks to better capture empirical evidence. While these theoretical additions seem intuitive, their evolutionary foundation is poorly documented and the origin of altruistic punishment remains puzzling. Using a new approach, that closely integrates empirical results from a public goods experiment with punishment together with an evolutionary agent-based simulation model, enables us to identify the underlying key mechanism of this puzzling behavior. We design the agent-based model by means of a limited set of behavioral patterns observed in the experimental data. We validate our results by comparing our quantitative predictions of the punishment behavior and its effect on the level of cooperation with the corresponding empirical observations. Unlike descriptive theories, our approach provides a broad explanatory solution for the emergence and existence of altruistic punishment behavior in public goods game experiments: Altruistic punishment emerges spontaneously from a population of agents who are initially non-punishers, if variants of inequality or inequity aversion are the predominant preference sets. In particular we find, that a weaker, asymmetric variant of inequity aversion quantitatively explains the level of punishment observed in contemporary experiments: Our evolutionary model shows that disadvantageous inequity aversion cause altruistic punishment behavior to evolve to a level that precisely matches the empirical observations in public goods experiments.

Hadza Cooperation

Strong reciprocity is an effective way to promote cooperation. This is especially true when one not only cooperates with cooperators and defects on defectors (second-party punishment) but even punishes those who defect on others (third-party, “altruistic” punishment). Some suggest we humans have a taste for such altruistic punishment and that this was important in the evolution of human cooperation. To assess this we need to look across a wide range of cultures. As part of a cross-cultural project, I played three experimental economics games with the Hadza, who are hunter-gatherers in Tanzania. The Hadza frequently engaged in second-party punishment but they rarely engaged in third-party punishment. Other small-scale societies engaged in less third-party punishment as well. I suggest third-party punishment only became more important in large, complex societies to solve more pressing collective-action problems.

On punishment and well-being

The existence of punishment opportunities has been shown to cause efficiency in some public goods experiments to increase considerably. In this paper we ask whether punishment also has a downside in terms of process dissatisfaction. We conduct an experiment to study the conjecture that an environment with strong punishment possibilities may lead to higher material payoffs but lower subjective well-being, in comparison with weaker punishment or no punishment possibilities at all. The more general motivation for our study stems from the notion that people’s subjective well-being may be affected by the institutional environment they find themselves in. Our findings show that harsher punishment possibilities lead to significantly higher well-being, controlling for earnings and other relevant variables. These results complement the evidence on the neural basis of altruistic punishment reported in De Quervain et al. (2004).

What you did to others you did to me? Brain activation during altruistic punishment in a first person versus a third party dictator game

What you did to others you did to me? Brain activation during altruistic punishment in a first person versus a third party dictator game

Mysteries of morality

Evolutionary theories of morality, beginning with Darwin, have focused on explanations for altruism. More generally, these accounts have concentrated on conscience (self-regulatory mechanisms) to the neglect of condemnation (mechanisms for punishing others). As a result, few theoretical tools are available for understanding the rapidly accumulating data surrounding third-party judgment and punishment. Here we consider the strategic interactions among actors, victims, and third-parties to help illuminate condemnation. We argue that basic differences between the adaptive problems faced by actors and third-parties indicate that actor conscience and third-party condemnation are likely performed by different cognitive mechanisms. Further, we argue that current theories of conscience do not easily explain its experimentally demonstrated insensitivity to consequences. However, these results might be explicable if conscience functions, in part, as a defense system for avoiding third-party punishment. If conscience serves defensive functions, then its computational structure should be closely tailored to the details of condemnation mechanisms. This possibility underscores the need for a better understanding of condemnation, which is important not only in itself but also for explaining the nature of conscience. We outline three evolutionary mysteries of condemnation that require further attention: third-party judgment, moralistic punishment, and moral impartiality.

On Hotheads and Dirty Harries

Recent research has shown that individuals are prepared to incur costs to punish non-cooperators, even in one-shot interactions. However, why would people punish non-cooperators with no apparent benefits for the punishers themselves? This behavior is also known as altruistic punishment. When defection is discovered, an individual evaluates this act as unfair, which could result in anger. We argue that although unfairness and anger are often intertwined, it is primarily the experience of anger and not the perception of unfairness that produces altruistic punishment. We briefly present recent data in line with the hypothesis that identifies anger as the underlying mechanism of altruistic punishment. Furthermore, additional influences regarding the occurrence of altruistic punishment, e.g., intentionality of the interaction partner, the role of satisfaction, and individual differences, are discussed.

Comeuppance: Costly Signaling, Altruistic Punishment, and Other Biological Components of Fiction; Out of the Shadow: Ecopsychology, Story, and Encounters with the Land

Book Review| June 01 2009 Comeuppance: Costly Signaling, Altruistic Punishment, and Other Biological Components of Fiction; Out of the Shadow: Ecopsychology, Story, and Encounters with the Land Michelle Balaev Michelle Balaev Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google American Literature (2009) 81 (2): 420–422. https://doi.org/10.1215/00029831-2009-021 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Michelle Balaev; Comeuppance: Costly Signaling, Altruistic Punishment, and Other Biological Components of Fiction; Out of the Shadow: Ecopsychology, Story, and Encounters with the Land. American Literature 1 June 2009; 81 (2): 420–422. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00029831-2009-021 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsAmerican Literature Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2009 by Duke University Press2009 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

The Influence of Social Category and Reciprocity on Adults' and Children's Altruistic Behavior

Evolutionary theories of altruism have suggested that reciprocal exchanges and ingroup favoritism have been important strategies leading to the evolution of altruistic behavior among strangers. This study investigates whether minimal information about an interaction partner's membership in a trivial social group affects the allocations of adults and children in dictator game, reciprocity in a sequential prisoner's dilemma, and altruistic punishment in a third-party punishment game. In all, 155 adults and 157 students from second and sixth grade played these three economic games in either an ingroup, outgroup, or neutral condition. Adults and sixth-grade children allocated more to ingroup than to outgroup receivers in the dictator game, and adults punished ingroup non-cooperators more in the third-party punishment game than outgroup non-cooperators. When additional information about the other player's past behavior was presented, adults reciprocated equally with ingroup, outgroup, and neutral players, whereas children from sixth grade reciprocated more with ingroup and neutral than with outgroup players. Overall, the results of this study support the importance of group membership and reciprocity for adults' and older elementary school children's altruistic behavior. For younger elementary school children, however, reciprocity and group membership do not serve as salient social information that influence their altruistic behavior.

Comeuppance: Costly Signaling, Altruistic Punishment, and Other Biological Components of Fiction (review)

Comeuppance: Costly Signaling, Altruistic Punishment, and Other Biological Components of Fiction (review)

The role of egalitarian motives in altruistic punishment

We conduct experiments in which subjects participate in both a game that measures preferences for income equality and a public goods game involving costly punishment. The results indicate that individuals who care about equality are those who are most willing to punish free-riders in public goods games.

The Neural Correlates of Third-Party Punishment

The Neural Correlates of Third-Party Punishment