Costly Punishment Across Human Societies

By Joseph Henrich, R. Mcelreath, A. Barr, Jean Ensminger, Clark C. Barrett, Alexander H. Bolyanatz, Juan-Camilo Cardenas, Michael Gurven, E. Gwako, Natalie Henrich and 4 more. Science, 2006

1,580 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Recent behavioral experiments aimed at understanding the evolutionary foundations of human cooperation have suggested that a willingness to engage in costly punishment, even in one-shot situations, may be part of human psychology and a key element in understanding our sociality. However, because most experiments have been confined to students in industrialized societies, generalizations of these insights to the species have necessarily been tentative. Here, experimental results from 15 diverse populations show that (i) all populations demonstrate some willingness to administer costly punishment as unequal behavior increases, (ii) the magnitude of this punishment varies substantially across populations, and (iii) costly punishment positively covaries with altruistic behavior across populations. These findings are consistent with models of the gene-culture coevolution of human altruism and further sharpen what any theory of human cooperation needs to explain.

Subfields: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Safety Research, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/318d6c8912015ad86570b9d2ee26bbe18c332482

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Citations in the corpus

The evolution of religion and morality: a synthesis of ethnographic and experimental evidence from eight societies (2017, background): “The experimental economics literature shows that cross-culturally, people are less inclined to be selfish when the threat of costly punishment looms (Fehr & Fischbacher, 2004; Henrich et al., 2006; Ohtsubo, Masuda, Watanabe, & Masuchi, 2010).”
Cooperation under alternative punishment institutions: An experiment (2009, background): “…the variety of unstructured interactions that could characterize a social group (Andreoni et al., 2003; Decker et al., 2003; Denant-Boemont et al., 2007; Xiao and Houser, 2005; Camera and Casari, 2009; Casari, 2005; Henrich et al., 2006; Guererk et al., 2006; Carpenter, 2007; Nikiforakis, 2008).”
Two Key Steps in the Evolution of Human Cooperation (2012, background): “humans typically expect their playing partner to expect a reasonable offer (with “reasonable” depending on general cultural norms; Henrich et al., 2006), whereas chimpanzees in the ultimatum game seem not to take into account the needs or expectations of their playing partner at all (Jensen et al.”
Cooperation in humans: competition between groups and proximate emotions (2010, background): “…factors, such as punishment, which have received considerable empirical attention and support (Boyd et al., 2003; Egas & Riedl, 2008; Fehr & Fischbacher 2003; Fehr & Gachter 2002; Gintis et al., 2005; Haley & Fessler 2005; Hammerstein 2003; Henrich et al., 2005, 2006; Okamoto & Matsumura 2000).”
Altruism toward in-group members as a reputation mechanism (2010, neutral): “…altruistic and cooperative manners even in one-shot encounters (Berg, Dickhaut, & McCabe, 1995; Fehr & Fischbacher, 2003; Forsythe, Horowitz, Savin, & Sefton, 1994; Gintis, Bowles, Boyd, & Fehr, 2003; Henrich et al, 2006; Hoffman, McCabe, & Smith, 1996; Ledyard, 1995; Messick & McClintock, 1968).”
Strong Reciprocity and the Roots of Human Morality (2008, background): “1 Readers not acquainted with the range of evidence can consult Henrich et al. (2006) , Gintis, Bowles, Boyd, and Fehr (2003), and Fehr, Fischbacher, and Ga ¨chter (2002).”
Compassion: An Evolutionary Analysis and Empirical Review (2010, background): “, 2002); and that across cultures group members go to great lengths to punish individuals who are not cooperative (Henrich et al., 2006).”
Compassion for one reduces punishment for another (2011, background): “The primary goal of the current study was to examine this view by evokingcompassion in real-time ina controlled laboratory setting inorder to investigate its subsequent influence on third-party punishment — a fairly ubiquitous phenomenon in which transgressors are penalized by one individual for the”
Children's altruistic behavior in the dictator game (2007, background): “DGs vary in the degree to which the researcher is aware of the proposer’s allocation, the recipient, and whether a rationale is provided for sharing (e.g., Hill & Gurven, 2004).”