Abstract
Punishment can reform uncooperative behavior and hence could have contributed to humans’ ability to live in large-scale societies. Punishment by unaffected third parties has received extensive scientific scrutiny because third parties punish transgressors in laboratory experiments on behalf of strangers that they will never interact with again. Often overlooked in this research are interactions involving people who are not strangers, which constitute many interactions beyond the laboratory. Across three samples in two countries (United States and Japan; N = 1,294), we found that third parties’ anger at transgressors, and their intervention and punishment on behalf of victims, varied in real-life conflicts as a function of how much third parties valued the welfare of the disputants. Punishment was rare (1–2%) when third parties did not value the welfare of the victim, suggesting that previous economic game results have overestimated third parties’ willingness to punish transgressors on behalf of strangers.
References
|
Balafoutas, L., Nikiforakis, N. (2012). Norm enforcement in the city: A natural field experiment. European Economic Review, 56, 1773–1785. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Balafoutas, L., Nikiforakis, N., Rockenbach, B. (2014). Direct and indirect punishment among strangers in the field. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. doi:10.1073/pnas.1413170111 Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Balafoutas, L., Nikiforakis, N., Rockenbach, B. (2016). Altruistic punishment does not increase with the severity of norm violations in the field. Nature Communications, 7, 13327. Google Scholar | Crossref | Medline | |
|
Balliet, D., Tybur, J. M., Van Lange, P. A. M. (2017). Functional interdependence theory: An evolutionary account of social situations. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 21, 361–388. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI | |
|
Barclay, P. (2006). Reputational benefits for altruistic punishment. Evolution and Human Behavior, 27, 325–344. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Batson, C. D. (2015). What’s wrong with morality?: A social-psychological perspective. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Bernhard, H., Fischbacher, U., Fehr, E. (2006). Parochial altruism in humans. Nature, 442, 912–915. Google Scholar | Crossref | Medline | ISI | |
|
Boehm, C. (1987). Blood revenge: The enactment and management of conflict in montenegro and other tribal societies (2nd ed.). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Brown, S. L., Brown, R. M. (2006). Selective investment theory: Recasting the functional significance of close relationships. Psychological Inquiry, 17, 1–29. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Chagnon, N., Bugos, P. (1979). Kin selection and conflict: An analysis of a Yanomamö ax fight. In Chagnon, N., Irons, W. (Eds.), Evolutionary biology and human social behavior: An anthropological perspective (pp. 213–238). North Scituate, MA: Duxbury Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Chavez, A. K., Bicchieri, C. (2013). Third-party sanctioning and compensation behavior: Findings from the ultimatum game. Journal of Economic Psychology, 39, 268–277. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
De Waal, F. B. M. (2008). Putting the altruism back into altruism: The evolution of empathy. Annual Review of Psychology, 59, 279–300. Google Scholar | Crossref | Medline | ISI | |
|
Ericksen, K. P., Horton, H. (1992). “Blood feuds”: Cross-cultural variations in kin group vengeance. Behavior Science Research, 26, 57–85. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | |
|
Fehr, E., Fischbacher, U. (2003). The nature of human altruism. Nature, 425, 785–791. Google Scholar | Crossref | Medline | ISI | |
|
Fehr, E., Fischbacher, U. (2004). Third-party punishment and social norms. Evolution and Human Behavior, 25, 63–87. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Guala, F. (2012). Reciprocity: Weak or strong? What punishment experiments do (and do not) demonstrate. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 35, 1–15. Google Scholar | Crossref | Medline | ISI | |
|
Henrich, J., Boyd, R., Bowles, S., Camerer, C., Fehr, E., Gintis, H.…Tracer, D . (2005). “Economic man” in cross-cultural perspective: Behavioral experiments in 15 small-scale societies. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 28, 795–855. Google Scholar | Crossref | Medline | ISI | |
|
Henrich, J., Ensminger, J., McElreath, R., Barr, A., Barrett, C., Bolyanatz, A.…Ziker, J . (2010). Markets, religion, community size, and the evolution of fairness and punishment. Science, 327, 1480–1484. Google Scholar | Crossref | Medline | ISI | |
|
Henrich, J., McElreath, R., Barr, A., Ensminger, J., Barrett, C., Bolyanatz, A.…Ziker, J . (2006). Costly punishment across human societies. Science, 312, 1767–1770. Google Scholar | Crossref | Medline | ISI | |
|
Hofmann, W., Brandt, M. J., Wisneski, D. C., Rockenbach, B., Skitka, L. J. (2018). Moral punishment in everyday life. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. doi:10.1177/0146167218775075 Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | |
|
Jordan, J. J., Hoffman, M., Bloom, P., Rand, D. G. (2016). Third-party punishment as a costly signal of trustworthiness. Nature, 530, 473–476. Google Scholar | Crossref | Medline | ISI | |
|
Krasnow, M. M., Cosmides, L., Pedersen, E. J., Tooby, J. (2012). What are punishment and reputation for? PLoS One, 7, e45662. Google Scholar | Crossref | Medline | ISI | |
|
Krasnow, M. M., Delton, A. W., Cosmides, L., Tooby, J. (2016). Looking under the hood of third-party punishment reveals design for personal benefit. Psychological Science, 27, 405–418. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI | |
|
Kriss, P. H., Weber, R. A., Xiao, E. (2016). Turning a blind eye, but not the other cheek: On the robustness of costly punishment. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 128, 159–177. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Kurzban, R., DeScioli, P., O’Brien, E. (2007). Audience effects on moralistic punishment. Evolution and Human Behavior, 28, 75–84. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Lieberman, D., Linke, L. (2007). The effect of social category on third party punishment. Evolutionary Psychology, 5, 289–305. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | |
|
Marlowe, F. W. (2009). Hadza cooperation. Human Nature, 20, 417–430. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Ohtsubo, Y., Sasaki, S., Nakanishi, D., Igawa, J. (2018). Within-individual associations among third-party intervention strategies: Third-party helpers, but not punishers, reward generosity. Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences, 12, 113–125. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Pedersen, E. J., Kurzban, R., McCullough, M. E. (2013). Do humans really punish altruistically? A closer look. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 280, 20122723. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Pedersen, E. J., McAuliffe, W. H. B., McCullough, M. E. (2018). The unresponsive avenger: More evidence that disinterested third parties do not punish altruistically. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 147, 514. Google Scholar | Crossref | Medline | |
|
Phillips, S., Cooney, M. (2005). Aiding peace, abetting violence: Third parties and the management of conflict. American Sociological Review, 70, 334–354. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI | |
|
Rachlin, H . (2015). Social cooperation and self-control. Managerial and Decision Economics. doi:10.1002/mde.2714 Google Scholar | |
|
Roberts, G. (2005). Cooperation through interdependence. Animal Behaviour, 70, 901–908. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Tooby, J., Cosmides, L., Sell, A. N., Lieberman, D., Sznycer, D. (2008). Internal regulatory variables and the design of human motivation: A computational and evolutionary approach. In Elliott, A. J. (Ed.), Handbook of approach and avoidance motivation (pp. 251–271). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Google Scholar |


