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The Journal of Neuroscience : the... Mar 2018People are particularly sensitive to injustice. Accordingly, deeper knowledge regarding the processes that underlie the perception of injustice, and the subsequent... (Randomized Controlled Trial)
Randomized Controlled Trial
People are particularly sensitive to injustice. Accordingly, deeper knowledge regarding the processes that underlie the perception of injustice, and the subsequent decisions to either punish transgressors or compensate victims, is of important social value. By combining a novel decision-making paradigm with functional neuroimaging, we identified specific brain networks that are involved with both the perception of, and response to, social injustice, with reward-related regions preferentially involved in punishment compared with compensation. Developing a computational model of punishment allowed for disentangling the neural mechanisms and psychological motives underlying decisions of whether to punish and, subsequently, of how severely to punish. Results show that the neural mechanisms underlying punishment differ depending on whether one is directly affected by the injustice, or whether one is a third-party observer of a violation occurring to another. Specifically, the anterior insula was involved in decisions to punish following harm, whereas, in third-party scenarios, we found amygdala activity associated with punishment severity. Additionally, we used a pharmacological intervention using oxytocin, and found that oxytocin influenced participants' fairness expectations, and in particular enhanced the frequency of low punishments. Together, these results not only provide more insight into the fundamental brain mechanisms underlying punishment and compensation, but also illustrate the importance of taking an explorative, multimethod approach when unraveling the complex components of everyday decision-making. The perception of injustice is a fundamental precursor to many disagreements, from small struggles at the dinner table to wasteful conflict between cultures and countries. Despite its clear importance, relatively little is known about how the brain processes these violations. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, we combine methods from neuroscience, psychology, and economics to explore the neurobiological mechanisms involved in both the perception of injustice as well as the punishment and compensation decisions that follow. Using a novel behavioral paradigm, we identified specific brain networks, developed a computational model of punishment, and found that administrating the neuropeptide oxytocin increases the administration of low punishments of norm violations in particular. Results provide valuable insights into the fundamental neurobiological mechanisms underlying social injustice.
Topics: Brain; Compensation and Redress; Computer Simulation; Decision Making; Double-Blind Method; Humans; Male; Oxytocin; Punishment; Reward; Social Justice; Young Adult
PubMed: 29459373
DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1242-17.2018 -
Journal of Environmental and Public... 2022Teenage depression, also known as TD, is a common mental illness that is characterized by symptoms such as hopelessness, helplessness, pessimism, depression, and...
Teenage depression, also known as TD, is a common mental illness that is characterized by symptoms such as hopelessness, helplessness, pessimism, depression, and decreased energy. It has always been a hot topic to discuss how rewards and punishments work in education. In order to prevent and treat adolescent depression, this study examines the mechanisms of educational reinforcement and punishment as well as psychological interventions. In this study, the activated brain regions are analyzed using data mining (DM) technology to determine whether they are significantly more or less active than the rest of the brain of students who are not experiencing negative emotions. When the word vector has 90 dimensions, the results demonstrate that the average 1 value of the weighted word vector method is 81.3 percent. It has been established that the approach taken in this work offers a reliable way to diagnose TD.
Topics: Adolescent; Depression; Humans; Psychosocial Intervention; Punishment; Reward; Students
PubMed: 36111067
DOI: 10.1155/2022/3919519 -
Proceedings of the National Academy of... Jun 2023The question of how cooperation evolves and is maintained among nonkin is central to the biological, social, and behavioral sciences. Previous research has focused on...
The question of how cooperation evolves and is maintained among nonkin is central to the biological, social, and behavioral sciences. Previous research has focused on explaining how cooperation in social dilemmas can be maintained by direct and indirect reciprocity among the participants of the social dilemma. However, in complex human societies, both modern and ancient, cooperation is frequently maintained by means of specialized third-party enforcement. We provide an evolutionary-game-theoretic model that explains how specialized third-party enforcement of cooperation (specialized reciprocity) can emerge. A population consists of producers and enforcers. First, producers engage in a joint undertaking represented by a prisoner's dilemma. They are paired randomly and receive no information about their partner's history, which precludes direct and indirect reciprocity. Then, enforcers tax producers and may punish their clients. Finally, the enforcers are randomly paired and may try to grab resources from each other. In order to sustain producer cooperation, enforcers must punish defecting producers, but punishing is costly to enforcers. We show that the threat of potential intraenforcer conflict can incentivize enforcers to engage in costly punishment of producers, provided they are sufficiently informed to maintain a reputation system. That is, the "guards" are guarded by the guards themselves. We demonstrate the key mechanisms analytically and corroborate our results with numerical simulations.
Topics: Humans; Cooperative Behavior; Models, Psychological; Punishment; Biological Evolution; Records; Game Theory
PubMed: 37279275
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2207029120 -
PloS One 2020A team contest entails both public good characteristics within the teams as well as a contest across teams. In an experimental study, we analyse behaviour in such a team...
A team contest entails both public good characteristics within the teams as well as a contest across teams. In an experimental study, we analyse behaviour in such a team contest when allowing to punish or to reward other team members. Moreover, we compare two types of contest environment: One in which two teams compete for a prize and another one in which we switch off the between-group element of the contest. We find that reward giving, as opposed to punishing, induces higher contributions to the team contest. Furthermore, expenditures on rewarding other co-players are significantly higher than those for punishing.
Topics: Competitive Behavior; Cooperative Behavior; Group Processes; Humans; Models, Psychological; Punishment; Reward
PubMed: 32941442
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0236544 -
Nature Mar 2008A key aspect of human behaviour is cooperation. We tend to help others even if costs are involved. We are more likely to help when the costs are small and the benefits...
A key aspect of human behaviour is cooperation. We tend to help others even if costs are involved. We are more likely to help when the costs are small and the benefits for the other person significant. Cooperation leads to a tension between what is best for the individual and what is best for the group. A group does better if everyone cooperates, but each individual is tempted to defect. Recently there has been much interest in exploring the effect of costly punishment on human cooperation. Costly punishment means paying a cost for another individual to incur a cost. It has been suggested that costly punishment promotes cooperation even in non-repeated games and without any possibility of reputation effects. But most of our interactions are repeated and reputation is always at stake. Thus, if costly punishment is important in promoting cooperation, it must do so in a repeated setting. We have performed experiments in which, in each round of a repeated game, people choose between cooperation, defection and costly punishment. In control experiments, people could only cooperate or defect. Here we show that the option of costly punishment increases the amount of cooperation but not the average payoff of the group. Furthermore, there is a strong negative correlation between total payoff and use of costly punishment. Those people who gain the highest total payoff tend not to use costly punishment: winners don't punish. This suggests that costly punishment behaviour is maladaptive in cooperation games and might have evolved for other reasons.
Topics: Adult; Altruism; Biological Evolution; Cooperative Behavior; Female; Game Theory; Humans; Male; Models, Psychological; Punishment; Risk Assessment
PubMed: 18354481
DOI: 10.1038/nature06723 -
Scientific Reports Apr 2022To effectively navigate their environments, infants and children learn how to recognize events predict salient outcomes, such as rewards or punishments. Relatively...
To effectively navigate their environments, infants and children learn how to recognize events predict salient outcomes, such as rewards or punishments. Relatively little is known about how children acquire this ability to attach value to the stimuli they encounter. Studies often examine children's ability to learn about rewards and threats using either classical conditioning or behavioral choice paradigms. Here, we assess both approaches and find that they yield different outcomes in terms of which individuals had efficiently learned the value of information presented to them. The findings offer new insights into understanding how to assess different facets of value learning in children.
Topics: Child; Conditioning, Classical; Decision Making; Humans; Infant; Learning; Punishment; Reward
PubMed: 35396382
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-09894-3 -
PloS One 2023Recent laboratory findings have demonstrated that, when imposed separately, punishment and reward have different effects on motor learning. In real-world applications,...
Recent laboratory findings have demonstrated that, when imposed separately, punishment and reward have different effects on motor learning. In real-world applications, however, they are usually used in combination to improve human behavior. For instance, a student may be punished when failing an examination and rewarded when getting a high score. It remains unclear precisely how people are motivated when punishment and reward are combined. Moreover, whether it is possible for the effects of punishment and reward to transfer to other learning situations remains unknown. In the present study, four groups of participants were trained on a motor adaptation task under conditions of either punishment, reward, both punishment and reward combination, or a neutral control condition (neither). We tested what the effect of combining punishment and reward is on motor learning and memory. Further, we examined whether the effect could transfer to later opposite-direction learning in the absence of motivational feedback. Specifically, during the initial learning when there is motivational feedback, combining punishment and reward can not only accelerate learning rate, but can also increase learning extent. More interestingly, the effect can even transfer to later opposite-direction learning. The findings suggest that the combination of punishment and reward has a distinct advantage over pure punishment or reward on motor learning and the effect can transfer to opposite motor learning.
Topics: Humans; Punishment; Learning; Reward; Motivation
PubMed: 37036847
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0282028 -
Nature Communications Jul 2020Across societies, humans punish norm violations. To date, research on the antecedents and consequences of punishment has largely relied upon agent-based modeling and...
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.
Topics: Adolescent; Adult; Aged; Behavior; Emotions; Female; Humans; Male; Middle Aged; Morals; Motivation; Punishment; Risk Factors; Young Adult
PubMed: 32647165
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-17286-2 -
Psychophysiology Mar 2022The Reward-Positivity (RewP) is a frontocentral event-related potential elicited following reward and punishment feedback. Reinforcement learning theories propose the...
The Reward-Positivity (RewP) is a frontocentral event-related potential elicited following reward and punishment feedback. Reinforcement learning theories propose the RewP reflects a reward prediction error that increases following more favorable (vs. unfavorable) outcomes. An alternative perspective, however, proposes this component indexes a salience-prediction error that increases following more salient outcomes. Evidence from prior studies that included both reward and punishment conditions is mixed, supporting both accounts. However, these studies often varied how feedback stimuli were repeated across reward and punishment conditions. Differences in the frequency of feedback stimuli may drive inconsistencies by introducing salience effects for infrequent stimuli regardless of whether they are associated with rewards or punishments. To test this hypothesis, the current study examined the effect of outcome valence and stimulus frequency on the RewP and neighboring P2 and P3 components in reward, punishment, and neutral contexts across two separate experiments that varied how often feedback stimuli were repeated between conditions. Experiment 1 revealed infrequent feedback stimuli generated overlapping positivity across all three components. However, controlling for stimulus frequency, experiment 2 revealed favorable outcomes that increased RewP and P3 positivity. Together, these results suggest the RewP reflects some combination of reward- and salience-prediction error encoding. Results also indicate infrequent feedback stimuli elicited strong salience effects across all three components that may inflate, eliminate, or reverse outcome valence effects for the RewP and P3. These results resolve several inconsistencies in the literature and have important implications for electrocortical investigations of reward and punishment feedback processing.
Topics: Adolescent; Electroencephalography; Evoked Potentials; Feedback, Psychological; Female; Humans; Male; Punishment; Reinforcement, Psychology; Reward
PubMed: 34847254
DOI: 10.1111/psyp.13981 -
Experimental Psychology Jan 2022A popular tool in the experimental research on dishonest behavior is the die-under-the-cup (DUTC) task in which subjects roll a die in private and report the outcome to...
A popular tool in the experimental research on dishonest behavior is the die-under-the-cup (DUTC) task in which subjects roll a die in private and report the outcome to the experimenter after being promised a payoff which increases with the die's outcome. The present paper reports the results of incorporating collective punishment into the DUTC task. We ran two experiments, each involving two rounds of the task performed in a computer lab. Despite being asked not to cheat, the average reported outcome in the first round exceeded the statistical expectancy of 3.5. The second round of the first experiment involved the threat that if this happened again, each subject would be fined by the difference between the average reported outcome and 3.5. Nevertheless, the average reported outcome in the second round significantly exceeded that of the first round. Running a second experiment, this time without the punishment threat, we ruled out the possibility that the increased cheating in the second round of the first experiment was due to a feedback effect, concluding that the threat of collective punishment acted to encourage cheating rather than helped deterring it.
Topics: Deception; Humans; Punishment
PubMed: 35441525
DOI: 10.1027/1618-3169/a000543