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Psychological Science Nov 2022From an early age, children are willing to pay a personal cost to punish others for violations that do not affect them directly. Various motivations underlie such...
From an early age, children are willing to pay a personal cost to punish others for violations that do not affect them directly. Various motivations underlie such "costly punishment": People may punish to enforce cooperative norms (amplifying punishment of in-groups) or to express anger at perpetrators (amplifying punishment of out-groups). Thus, group-related values and attitudes (e.g., how much one values fairness or feels out-group hostility) likely shape the development of group-related punishment. The present experiments ( 269, ages 3-8 from across the United States) tested whether children's punishment varies according to their parents' political ideology-a possible proxy for the value systems transmitted to children intergenerationally. As hypothesized, parents' self-reported political ideology predicted variation in the punishment behavior of their children. Specifically, parental conservatism was associated with children's punishment of out-group members, and parental liberalism was associated with children's punishment of in-group members. These findings demonstrate how differences in group-related ideologies shape punishment across generations.
Topics: Child; Humans; Child, Preschool; Punishment; Parents; Anger; Emotions; Politics
PubMed: 36179071
DOI: 10.1177/09567976221117154 -
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal... Nov 2021Cross-cultural research on moral reasoning has brought to the fore the question of whether moral judgements always turn on inferences about the mental states of others....
Cross-cultural research on moral reasoning has brought to the fore the question of whether moral judgements always turn on inferences about the mental states of others. Formal legal systems for assigning blame and punishment typically make fine-grained distinctions about mental states, as illustrated by the concept of , and experimental studies in the USA and elsewhere suggest everyday moral judgements also make use of such distinctions. On the other hand, anthropologists have suggested that some societies have a morality that is disregarding of mental states, and have marshalled ethnographic and experimental evidence in support of this claim. Here, we argue against the claim that some societies are simply less 'mind-minded' than others about morality. In place of this cultural main effects hypothesis about the role of mindreading in morality, we propose a contextual variability view in which the role of mental states in moral judgement depends on the context and the reasons for judgement. On this view, which mental states are or are not relevant for a judgement is context-specific, and what appear to be cultural main effects are better explained by culture-by-context interactions. This article is part of the theme issue 'The language of cooperation: reputation and honest signalling'.
Topics: Humans; Judgment; Language; Male; Morals; Problem Solving; Punishment
PubMed: 34601922
DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2020.0288 -
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology Jun 2023Children's punishment behavior may be driven by both retribution and deterrence, but the potential primacy of either motive is unknown. Moreover, children's punishment...
Children's punishment behavior may be driven by both retribution and deterrence, but the potential primacy of either motive is unknown. Moreover, children's punishment enjoyment and compensation enjoyment have never been directly contrasted. Here, British, Colombian, and Italian 7- to 11-year-old children (N = 123) operated a Justice System in which they viewed different moral transgressions in Minecraft, a globally popular video game, either face-to-face with an experimenter or over the internet. Children could respond to transgressions by punishing transgressors and compensating victims. The purpose of the system was framed in terms of retribution, deterrence, or compensation between participants. Children's performance, endorsement, and enjoyment of punishment and compensation were measured, along with their endorsement of retribution versus deterrence as punishment justifications, during and/or after justice administration. Children overwhelmingly endorsed deterrence over retribution as their punishment justification irrespective of age. When asked to reproduce the presented frame in their own words, children more reliably reproduced the deterrence frame rather than the retribution frame. Punishment enjoyment decreased while compensation enjoyment increased over time. Despite enjoying compensation more, children preferentially endorsed punishment over compensation, especially with increasing age and transgression severity. Reported deterrent justifications, superior reproduction of deterrence framing, lower enjoyment of punishment than of compensation, and higher endorsement of punishment over compensation together suggest that children felt that they ought to mete out punishment as a means to deter future transgressions. Face-to-face and internet-mediated responses were not distinguishable, supporting a route to social psychology research with primary school-aged children unable to physically visit labs.
Topics: Humans; Child; Punishment; Motivation; Pleasure; Happiness; Emotions
PubMed: 36731278
DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2023.105630 -
PloS One 2021A large body of empirical evidence suggests that altruistic punishment abounds in human societies. Based on such evidence, it is suggested that punishment serves an...
A large body of empirical evidence suggests that altruistic punishment abounds in human societies. Based on such evidence, it is suggested that punishment serves an important role in promoting cooperation in humans and possibly other species. However, as punishment is costly, its evolution is subject to the same problem that it tries to address. To suppress this so-called second-order free-rider problem, known theoretical models on the evolution of punishment resort to one of the few established mechanisms for the evolution of cooperation. This leaves the question of whether altruistic punishment can evolve and give rise to the evolution of cooperation in the absence of such auxiliary cooperation-favoring mechanisms unaddressed. Here, by considering a population of individuals who play a public goods game, followed by a public punishing game, introduced here, we show that altruistic punishment indeed evolves and promotes cooperation in the absence of a cooperation-favoring mechanism. In our model, the punishment pool is considered a public resource whose resources are used for punishment. We show that the evolution of a punishing institution is facilitated when resources in the punishment pool, instead of being wasted, are used to reward punishers when there is nobody to punish. Besides, we show that higher returns to the public resource or punishment pool facilitate the evolution of prosocial instead of antisocial punishment. We also show that an optimal cost of investment in the punishment pool facilitates the evolution of prosocial punishment. Finally, our analysis shows that being close to a physical phase transition facilitates the evolution of altruistic punishment.
Topics: Models, Theoretical; Punishment; Social Behavior; Time Factors
PubMed: 34358254
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0254860 -
ELife Jun 2024How human prefrontal and insular regions interact while maximizing rewards and minimizing punishments is unknown. Capitalizing on human intracranial recordings, we...
How human prefrontal and insular regions interact while maximizing rewards and minimizing punishments is unknown. Capitalizing on human intracranial recordings, we demonstrate that the functional specificity toward reward or punishment learning is better disentangled by interactions compared to local representations. Prefrontal and insular cortices display non-selective neural populations to rewards and punishments. Non-selective responses, however, give rise to context-specific interareal interactions. We identify a reward subsystem with redundant interactions between the orbitofrontal and ventromedial prefrontal cortices, with a driving role of the latter. In addition, we find a punishment subsystem with redundant interactions between the insular and dorsolateral cortices, with a driving role of the insula. Finally, switching between reward and punishment learning is mediated by synergistic interactions between the two subsystems. These results provide a unifying explanation of distributed cortical representations and interactions supporting reward and punishment learning.
Topics: Humans; Punishment; Reward; Male; Adult; Female; Prefrontal Cortex; Learning; Young Adult; Insular Cortex; Frontal Lobe
PubMed: 38941238
DOI: 10.7554/eLife.92938 -
Frontiers in Public Health 2023Childrearing practices in the Caribbean and other postcolonial states have long been associated with corporal punishment and are influenced by expectations of children...
Childrearing practices in the Caribbean and other postcolonial states have long been associated with corporal punishment and are influenced by expectations of children for respectfulness and obedience. Evidence across settings shows that physical punishment of young children is both ineffective and detrimental. Saving Brains Grenada (SBG) implemented a pilot study of an intervention based on the Conscious Discipline curriculum that aimed to build adult caregivers' skills around non-violent child discipline. We hypothesized that attitudes towards corporal punishment would shift to be negative as adults learned more positive discipline methods, and that child neurodevelopment would correspondingly improve. This report reviews the impact of monitoring and evaluation on the design and implementation of the intervention. Study 1 presents findings from the pilot study. Despite positive gains in neurodevelopmental outcomes among children in the intervention compared to controls, attitudes towards corporal punishment and reported use of it did not change. Additionally, several internal conflicts in the measures used to assess corporal punishment behaviors and attitudes were identified. Study 2 is a response to learning from Study 1 and highlights the importance for monitoring and evaluation to be data-informed, adaptive, and culturally appropriate. In Study 2, the SBG research team conducted cognitive interviews and group discussions with stakeholders to assess the content and comprehensibility of the Attitudes Towards Corporal Punishment Scale (ACP). This yielded insights into the measurement of attitudes towards corporal punishment and related parenting behavior, and prompted several revisions to the ACP. To accurately evaluate the intervention's theory of change and its goal to reduce violence against children, reliable and appropriate measures of attitudes towards corporal punishment and punishment behaviors are needed. Together, these two studies emphasize the value of continuous monitoring, evaluation, and learning in the implementation, adaptation, evaluation, and scaling of SBG and similar early childhood development interventions.
Topics: Adult; Child; Child, Preschool; Humans; Grenada; Pilot Projects; Punishment; Brain; Attitude
PubMed: 37744480
DOI: 10.3389/fpubh.2023.1127687 -
The Journal of Neuroscience : the... Jun 2020Actions executed toward obtaining a reward are frequently associated with the probability of harm occurring during action execution. Learning this probability allows for...
Actions executed toward obtaining a reward are frequently associated with the probability of harm occurring during action execution. Learning this probability allows for appropriate computation of future harm to guide action selection. Impaired learning of this probability may be critical for the pathogenesis of anxiety or reckless and impulsive behavior. Here we designed a task for punishment probability learning during reward-guided actions to begin to understand the neuronal basis of this form of learning, and the biological or environmental variables that influence action selection after learning. Male and female Long-Evans rats were trained in a seek-take behavioral paradigm where the seek action was associated with varying probability of punishment. The take action remained safe and was followed by reward delivery. Learning was evident as subjects selectively adapted seek action behavior as a function of punishment probability. Recording of neural activity in the mPFC during learning revealed changes in phasic mPFC neuronal activity during risky-seek actions but not during the safe take actions or reward delivery, revealing that this region is involved in learning of probabilistic punishment. After learning, the variables that influenced behavior included reinforcer and punisher value, pretreatment with the anxiolytic diazepam, and biological sex. In particular, females were more sensitive to probabilistic punishment than males. These data demonstrate that flexible encoding of risky actions by mPFC is involved in probabilistic punishment learning and provide a novel behavioral approach for studying the pathogenesis of anxiety and impulsivity with inclusion of sex as a biological variable. Actions we choose to execute toward obtaining a reward are often associated with the probability of harm occurring. Impaired learning of this probability may be critical for the pathogenesis of anxiety or reckless behavior and impulsivity. We developed a behavioral model to assess this mode of learning. This procedure allowed us to determine biological and environmental factors that influence the resistance of reward seeking to probabilistic punishment and to identify the mPFC as a region that flexibly adapts its response to risky actions as contingencies are learned.
Topics: Animals; Female; Learning; Male; Prefrontal Cortex; Punishment; Rats; Rats, Long-Evans; Reward; Risk-Taking
PubMed: 32409619
DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0310-20.2020 -
Proceedings of the National Academy of... Jul 2023Punishing wrongdoers can confer reputational benefits, and people sometimes punish without careful consideration. But are these observations related? Does reputation...
Punishing wrongdoers can confer reputational benefits, and people sometimes punish without careful consideration. But are these observations related? Does reputation drive people to people to "punish without looking"? And if so, is this because punishment looks particularly virtuous? To investigate, we assigned "Actors" to decide whether to sign punitive petitions about politicized issues ("punishment"), after first deciding whether to read articles opposing these petitions ("looking"). To manipulate reputation, we matched Actors with copartisan "Evaluators," varying whether Evaluators observed i) nothing about Actors' behavior, ii) whether Actors punished, or iii) whether Actors punished and whether they looked. Across four studies of Americans (total = 10,343), Evaluators rated Actors more positively, and financially rewarded them, if they chose to (vs. not to) punish. Correspondingly, making observable to Evaluators (i.e., moving from our first to second condition) drove Actors to punish more overall. Furthermore, because some of these individuals did not look, making punishment observable increased rates of punishment without looking. Yet punishers who eschewed opposing perspectives did not appear virtuous. In fact, Evaluators preferred Actors who punished with (vs. without) looking. Correspondingly, making observable (i.e., moving from our second to third condition) drove Actors to look overall-and to punish without looking at comparable or rates. We thus find that reputation can encourage reflexive punishment-but simply as a byproduct of generally encouraging punishment, and not as a specific reputational strategy. Indeed, rather than fueling unquestioning decisions, spotlighting punishers' decision-making processes may encourage reflection.
Topics: Humans; Social Behavior; Cooperative Behavior; Punishment; Reward
PubMed: 37406099
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2302475120 -
Human Brain Mapping Nov 2017Human altruistic behaviors are heterogeneous across both contexts and people, whereas the neural signatures underlying the heterogeneity remain to be elucidated. To...
Human altruistic behaviors are heterogeneous across both contexts and people, whereas the neural signatures underlying the heterogeneity remain to be elucidated. To address this issue, we examined the neural signatures underlying the context- and person-dependent altruistic punishment, conjoining event-related fMRI with both task-based and resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC). Acting as an impartial third party, participants decided how to punish norm violators either alone or in the presence of putative others. We found that the presence of others decreased altruistic punishment due to diffusion of responsibility. Those behavioral effects paralleled altered neural responses in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) and putamen. Further, we identified modulation of responsibility diffusion on task-based functional connectivity of dACC with the brain regions implicated in reward processing (i.e., posterior cingulate cortex and amygdala/orbital frontal cortex). Finally, the RSFC results revealed that (i) increased intrinsic connectivity strengths of the putamen with temporoparietal junction and dorsolateral PFC were associated with attenuated responsibility diffusion in altruistic punishment and (ii) increased putamen-dorsomedial PFC connectivity strengths were associated with reduced responsibility diffusion in self-reported responsibility. Taken together, our findings elucidate the context- and person-dependent altruistic behaviors as well as associated neural substrates and thus provide a potential neurocognitive mechanism of heterogeneous human altruistic behaviors. Hum Brain Mapp 38:5535-5550, 2017. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Topics: Altruism; Analysis of Variance; Brain; Brain Mapping; Female; Humans; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Male; Neuropsychological Tests; Punishment; Regression Analysis; Rest; Reward; Social Responsibility; Young Adult
PubMed: 28744939
DOI: 10.1002/hbm.23747 -
Frontiers in Public Health 2022Although positive safety leadership has attracted increasingly academic and practical attention due to its critical effects on followers' safety compliance behavior, far...
BACKGROUND
Although positive safety leadership has attracted increasingly academic and practical attention due to its critical effects on followers' safety compliance behavior, far fewer steps have been taken to study the safety impact of laissez-faire leadership.
OBJECTIVE
This study examines the relationships between safety-specific leader reward and punishment omission (laissez-faire leadership) and followers' safety compliance, and the mediations of safety-specific distributive justice and role ambiguity.
METHODS
On a two-wave online survey of 307 workers from high-risk enterprises in China, these relationships were tested by structural equations modeling and bootstrapping procedures.
RESULTS
Findings show that safety-specific leader reward omission was negatively associated with followers' safety compliance through the mediating effects of safety-specific distributive justice and role ambiguity. Safety-specific leader punishment omission was also negatively associated with followers' safety compliance through the mediating effect of safety-specific role ambiguity, while safety-specific distributive justice was an insignificant mediator.
ORIGINALITY
The study addresses and closes more gaps by explaining how two contextualized laissez-faire leadership measures relate to followers' safety behaviors, following the contextualization and matching principles between predictors, mediators and criteria, and by revealing two mechanisms behind the detrimental effects of laissez-faire leadership on safety outcomes.
Topics: China; Guideline Adherence; Humans; Leadership; Punishment; Reward; Safety; Social Justice
PubMed: 35372180
DOI: 10.3389/fpubh.2022.841345