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Nature Communications Jun 2018Strong reciprocity explains prosocial cooperation by the presence of individuals who incur costs to help those who helped them ('strong positive reciprocity') and to...
Strong reciprocity explains prosocial cooperation by the presence of individuals who incur costs to help those who helped them ('strong positive reciprocity') and to punish those who wronged them ('strong negative reciprocity'). Theories of social preferences predict that in contrast to 'strong reciprocators', self-regarding people cooperate and punish only if there are sufficient future benefits. Here, we test this prediction in a two-stage design. First, participants are classified according to their disposition towards strong positive reciprocity as either dispositional conditional cooperators (DCC) or dispositional free riders (DFR). Participants then play a one-shot public goods game, either with or without punishment. As expected, DFR cooperate only when punishment is possible, whereas DCC cooperate without punishment. Surprisingly, dispositions towards strong positive reciprocity are unrelated to strong negative reciprocity: punishment by DCC and DFR is practically identical. The 'burden of cooperation' is thus carried by a larger set of individuals than previously assumed.
Topics: Adolescent; Cooperative Behavior; Emotions; Female; Game Theory; Humans; Interpersonal Relations; Male; Models, Psychological; Punishment; Young Adult
PubMed: 29921863
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-04775-8 -
PloS One 2012Why did punishment and the use of reputation evolve in humans? According to one family of theories, they evolved to support the maintenance of cooperative group norms;...
Why did punishment and the use of reputation evolve in humans? According to one family of theories, they evolved to support the maintenance of cooperative group norms; according to another, they evolved to enhance personal gains from cooperation. Current behavioral data are consistent with both hypotheses (and both selection pressures could have shaped human cooperative psychology). However, these hypotheses lead to sharply divergent behavioral predictions in circumstances that have not yet been tested. Here we report results testing these rival predictions. In every test where social exchange theory and group norm maintenance theory made different predictions, subject behavior violated the predictions of group norm maintenance theory and matched those of social exchange theory. Subjects do not direct punishment toward those with reputations for norm violation per se; instead, they use reputation self-beneficially, as a cue to lower the risk that they personally will experience losses from defection. More tellingly, subjects direct their cooperative efforts preferentially towards defectors they have punished and away from those they haven't punished; they avoid expending punitive effort on reforming defectors who only pose a risk to others. These results are not consistent with the hypothesis that the psychology of punishment evolved to uphold group norms. The circumstances in which punishment is deployed and withheld-its circuit logic-support the hypothesis that it is generated by psychological mechanisms that evolved to benefit the punisher, by allowing him to bargain for better treatment.
Topics: Adult; Behavior; Biological Evolution; Cooperative Behavior; Female; Game Theory; Group Processes; Humans; Male; Models, Psychological; Models, Theoretical; Motivation; Psychology; Punishment; Reward; Risk; Social Behavior
PubMed: 23049833
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0045662 -
Journal of the International... Nov 2022Anorexia nervosa (AN) is associated with altered sensitivity to reward and punishment. Few studies have investigated whether this results in aberrant learning. The...
OBJECTIVES
Anorexia nervosa (AN) is associated with altered sensitivity to reward and punishment. Few studies have investigated whether this results in aberrant learning. The ability to learn from rewarding and aversive experiences is essential for flexibly adapting to changing environments, yet individuals with AN tend to demonstrate cognitive inflexibility, difficulty set-shifting and altered decision-making. Deficient reinforcement learning may contribute to repeated engagement in maladaptive behavior.
METHODS
This study investigated learning in AN using a probabilistic associative learning task that separated learning of stimuli via reward from learning via punishment. Forty-two individuals with Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)-5 restricting-type AN were compared to 38 healthy controls (HCs). We applied computational models of reinforcement learning to assess group differences in learning, thought to be driven by violations in expectations, or prediction errors (PEs). Linear regression analyses examined whether learning parameters predicted BMI at discharge.
RESULTS
AN had lower learning rates than HC following both positive and negative PE ( < .02), and were less likely to exploit what they had learned. Negative PE on punishment trials predicted lower discharge BMI ( < .001), suggesting individuals with more negative expectancies about avoiding punishment had the poorest outcome.
CONCLUSIONS
This is the first study to show lower rates of learning in AN following both positive and negative outcomes, with worse punishment learning predicting less weight gain. An inability to modify expectations about avoiding punishment might explain persistence of restricted eating despite negative consequences, and suggests that treatments that modify negative expectancy might be effective in reducing food avoidance in AN.
Topics: Humans; Punishment; Anorexia Nervosa; Reward; Computer Simulation; Affect
PubMed: 34839845
DOI: 10.1017/S1355617721001326 -
International Journal of Environmental... Oct 2022Child physical punishment is harmful to children and, as such, is being prohibited by a growing number of countries, including Wales. Parents' own childhood histories...
Child physical punishment is harmful to children and, as such, is being prohibited by a growing number of countries, including Wales. Parents' own childhood histories may affect their risks of using child physical punishment. We conducted a national cross-sectional survey of Welsh adults and measured relationships between the number of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) parents (n = 720 with children aged < 18) had suffered during childhood and their use of physical punishment towards children. Overall, 28.2% of parents reported having ever physically punished a child, and 5.8% reported having done so recently (in the last year). Child physical punishment use increased with the number of ACEs parents reported. Parents with 4+ ACEs were almost three times more likely to have ever physically punished a child and eleven times more likely to have done so recently (vs. those with 0 ACEs). The majority (88.1%) of parents that reported recent child physical punishment had a personal history of ACEs, while over half reported recently having been hit themselves by a child. Child physical punishment is strongly associated with parents' own ACE exposure and can occur within the context of broader conflict. Prohibiting physical punishment can protect children and, with appropriate family support, may help break intergenerational cycles of violence.
Topics: Adult; Adverse Childhood Experiences; Child; Child Abuse; Cross-Sectional Studies; Humans; Punishment; Wales
PubMed: 36232002
DOI: 10.3390/ijerph191912702 -
Proceedings. Biological Sciences Jan 2022Third-party punishment is thought to act as an honest signal of cooperative intent and such signals might escalate when competing to be chosen as a partner. Here, we...
Third-party punishment is thought to act as an honest signal of cooperative intent and such signals might escalate when competing to be chosen as a partner. Here, we investigate whether partner choice competition prompts escalating investment in third-party punishment. We also consider the case of signalling via helpful acts to provide a direct test of the relative strength of the two types of signals. Individuals invested more in third-party helping than third-party punishment and invested more in both signals when observed compared to when investments would be unseen. We found no clear effect of partner choice (over and above mere observation) on investments in either punishment or helping. Third-parties who invested more than a partner were preferentially chosen for a subsequent Trust Game although the preference to interact with the higher investor was more pronounced in the help than in the punishment condition. Third-parties who invested more were entrusted with more money and investments in third-party punishment or helping reliably signalled trustworthiness. Individuals who did not invest in third-party helping were more likely to be untrustworthy than those who did not invest in third-party punishment. This supports the conception of punishment as a more ambiguous signal of cooperative intent compared to help.
Topics: Cooperative Behavior; Game Theory; Games, Experimental; Humans; Punishment; Trust
PubMed: 35016543
DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2021.1773 -
Scientific Reports Apr 2023Peer punishment can help groups to establish collectively beneficial public goods. However, when humans condition punishment on other factors than poor contribution,...
Peer punishment can help groups to establish collectively beneficial public goods. However, when humans condition punishment on other factors than poor contribution, punishment can become ineffective and group cooperation deteriorates. Here we show that this happens in pluriform groups where members have different socio-demographic characteristics. In our public good provision experiment, participants were confronted with a public good from which all group members benefitted equally, and in-between rounds they could punish each other. Groups were uniform (members shared the same academic background) or pluriform (half the members shared the same academic background, and the other half shared another background). We show that punishment effectively enforced cooperation in uniform groups where punishment was conditioned on poor contribution. In pluriform groups, punishment was conditioned on poor contribution too, but also partially on others' social-demographic characteristics-dissimilar others were punished more than similar others regardless of their contribution. As a result, punishment lost its effectiveness in deterring free-riding and maintaining public good provision. Follow-up experiments indicated that such discriminatory punishment was used to demarcate and reinforce subgroup boundaries. This work reveals that peer punishment fails to enforce cooperation in groups with a pluriform structure, which is rule rather than exception in contemporary societies.
Topics: Humans; Cooperative Behavior; Punishment; Group Processes; Peer Group; Teaching Rounds; Game Theory
PubMed: 37055546
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-33167-2 -
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal... Feb 2019Impatience-the failure to wait or tolerate delayed rewards (e.g. food, drug and monetary incentives)-is a common behavioural tendency in humans. However, when rigidly... (Review)
Review
Impatience-the failure to wait or tolerate delayed rewards (e.g. food, drug and monetary incentives)-is a common behavioural tendency in humans. However, when rigidly and rapidly expressed with limited regard for future, often negative consequences, impatient or impulsive actions underlie and confer susceptibility for such diverse brain disorders as drug addiction, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and major depressive disorder. Consequently, 'waiting' impulsivity has emerged as a candidate endophenotype to inform translational research on underlying neurobiological mechanisms and biomarker discovery for many of the so-called impulse-control disorders. Indeed, as reviewed in this article, this research enterprise has revealed a number of unexpected targets and mechanisms for intervention. However, in the context of drug addiction, impulsive decisions that maximize short-term gains (e.g. acute drug consumption) over longer-term punishment (e.g. unemployment, homelessness, personal harm) defines one aspect of impulsivity, which may or may not be related to rapid, unrestrained actions over shorter timescales. We discuss the relevance of this distinction in impulsivity subtypes for drug addiction with reference to translational research in humans and other animals. This article is part of the theme issue 'Risk taking and impulsive behaviour: fundamental discoveries, theoretical perspectives and clinical implications'.
Topics: Humans; Impulsive Behavior; Punishment; Reward; Substance-Related Disorders; Translational Research, Biomedical
PubMed: 30966923
DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2018.0145 -
PLoS Computational Biology Dec 2021To invest effort into any cognitive task, people must be sufficiently motivated. Whereas prior research has focused primarily on how the cognitive control required to...
To invest effort into any cognitive task, people must be sufficiently motivated. Whereas prior research has focused primarily on how the cognitive control required to complete these tasks is motivated by the potential rewards for success, it is also known that control investment can be equally motivated by the potential negative consequence for failure. Previous theoretical and experimental work has yet to examine how positive and negative incentives differentially influence the manner and intensity with which people allocate control. Here, we develop and test a normative model of control allocation under conditions of varying positive and negative performance incentives. Our model predicts, and our empirical findings confirm, that rewards for success and punishment for failure should differentially influence adjustments to the evidence accumulation rate versus response threshold, respectively. This dissociation further enabled us to infer how motivated a given person was by the consequences of success versus failure.
Topics: Adult; Cognition; Crowdsourcing; Female; Humans; Male; Middle Aged; Motivation; Punishment; Reward
PubMed: 34962931
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009737 -
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 -
PloS One 2013Explaining cooperation in groups remains a key problem because reciprocity breaks down between more than two. Punishing individuals who contribute little provides a...
Explaining cooperation in groups remains a key problem because reciprocity breaks down between more than two. Punishing individuals who contribute little provides a potential answer but changes the dilemma to why pay the costs of punishing which, like cooperation itself, provides a public good. Nevertheless, people are observed to punish others in behavioural economic games, posing a problem for existing theory which highlights the difficulty in explaining the spread and persistence of punishment. Here, I consider the apparent mismatch between theory and evidence and show by means of instructive analysis and simulation how much of the experimental evidence for punishment comes from scenarios in which punishers may expect to obtain a net benefit from punishing free-riders. In repeated games within groups, punishment works by imposing costs on defectors so that it pays them to switch to cooperating. Both punishers and non-punishers then benefit from the resulting increase in cooperation, hence investing in punishment can constitute a social dilemma. However, I show the conditions in which the benefits of increased cooperation are so great that they more than offset the costs of punishing, thereby removing the temptation to free-ride on others' investments and making punishment explicable in terms of direct self-interest. Crucially, this is because of the leveraging effect imposed in typical studies whereby people can pay a small cost to inflict a heavy loss on a punished individual. In contrast to previous models suggesting punishment is disadvantaged when rare, I show it can invade until it comes into a producer-scrounger equilibrium with non-punishers. I conclude that adding punishment to an iterated public goods game can solve the problem of achieving cooperation by removing the social dilemma.
Topics: Biological Evolution; Computer Simulation; Cooperative Behavior; Game Theory; Humans; Punishment
PubMed: 23483907
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0057378