-
Journal of the Experimental Analysis of... Mar 2009Token reinforcement procedures and concepts are reviewed and discussed in relation to general principles of behavior. The paper is divided into four main parts. Part I... (Review)
Review
Token reinforcement procedures and concepts are reviewed and discussed in relation to general principles of behavior. The paper is divided into four main parts. Part I reviews and discusses previous research on token systems in relation to common behavioral functions--reinforcement, temporal organization, antecedent stimulus functions, and aversive control--emphasizing both the continuities with other contingencies and the distinctive features of token systems. Part II describes the role of token procedures in the symmetrical law of effect, the view that reinforcers (gains) and punishers (losses) can be measured in conceptually analogous terms. Part III considers the utility of token reinforcement procedures in cross-species analysis of behavior more generally, showing how token procedures can be used to bridge the methodological gulf separating research with humans from that with other animals. Part IV discusses the relevance of token systems to the field of behavioral economics. Token systems have the potential to significantly advance research and theory in behavioral economics, permitting both a more refined analysis of the costs and benefits underlying standard economic models, and a common currency more akin to human monetary systems. Some implications for applied research and for broader theoretical integration across disciplines will also be considered.
Topics: Animals; Discrimination Learning; Humans; Punishment; Reinforcement Schedule; Token Economy
PubMed: 19794838
DOI: 10.1901/jeab.2009.91-257 -
Neuropsychopharmacology : Official... Jan 2022One behavioral feature of drug addiction is continued drug use despite awareness that this causes negative consequences. Attempts to model this feature in animals...
One behavioral feature of drug addiction is continued drug use despite awareness that this causes negative consequences. Attempts to model this feature in animals typically involve punishing drug self-administration with electrical footshock to identify individuals whose drug use is differently suppressed by punishment. Here we sought to further study individual responsiveness of drug use to punishment in rats self-administering intravenous cocaine. Rats were first trained during several weeks to self-administer cocaine under a fixed-ratio 3 schedule of reinforcement. Then, their self-administration behavior was punished with increasing intensity of footshock (i.e., from 0.1 mA to 0.9 mA, every 30 min). With increasing intensity of punishment, rats first continued to self-administer cocaine before eventually stopping near completely. When retested, however, drug use became more responsive to punishment and was suppressed by a low and initially ineffective footshock intensity (i.e., 0.1 mA). This increase in responsiveness to punishment was seen in all individuals tested, albeit with varying degrees, and was acquired after one single experience with an intensity of punishment that near completely suppressed drug self-administration. Mere passive, non-contingent exposure to the same intensity, however, had no such effect. Once acquired, increased responsiveness to punishment persisted during at least one month when rats were tested every week, but not every day. Finally, increased responsiveness to punishment was not observed after exposure to a non-painful form of punishment (i.e., histamine). Overall, this study reveals that initial responsiveness of drug use to punishment can change rapidly and persistently with experience. We discuss several possible mechanisms that may account for this change in punishment responsiveness and also draw some of the implications and future perspectives for research on animal models of compulsion-like behavior.
Topics: Animals; Cocaine; Cocaine-Related Disorders; Conditioning, Operant; Punishment; Rats; Reinforcement, Psychology; Self Administration
PubMed: 34429520
DOI: 10.1038/s41386-021-01159-3 -
Personality and Social Psychology... Nov 2021Victims commonly respond to experienced wrongdoing by punishing or forgiving the transgressor. While much research has looked at predictors and immediate consequences of...
Victims commonly respond to experienced wrongdoing by punishing or forgiving the transgressor. While much research has looked at predictors and immediate consequences of these post-transgression responses, comparably less research has addressed the conditions under which punishment or forgiveness have positive or negative downstream consequences on the victim-transgressor relationship. Drawing from research on Social Value Orientation (SVO), we argue that both forgiveness and punishment can be rooted in either prosocial (i.e., relationship- or other-oriented), individualistic (i.e., self-oriented), or competitive (i.e., harm-oriented) motives pursued by the victim. Furthermore, we posit that downstream consequences of forgiveness and punishment crucially depend on how the transgressor interprets the victim's response. The novel motive-attribution framework presented here highlights the importance of alignment between a victim's motives and a transgressor's motive attributions underlying post-transgression responses. This framework thus contributes to a better understanding of positive and negative dynamics following post-transgression interactions.
Topics: Forgiveness; Humans; Motivation; Punishment; Social Perception
PubMed: 33884939
DOI: 10.1177/10888683211007021 -
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 -
Canadian Journal of Psychiatry. Revue... Apr 2022Many parents use physical forms of punishment, including spanking to correct perceived misbehavior. While some authors suggest spanking/slapping is a distinct and...
BACKGROUND
Many parents use physical forms of punishment, including spanking to correct perceived misbehavior. While some authors suggest spanking/slapping is a distinct and "milder" form of physical punishment, parents' use of spanking is consistently associated with poor outcomes for their children. However, less is known about the relationship between spanking/slapping and health and behavioral outcomes in adolescence independent of other childhood adversities.
OBJECTIVES
The objectives of this study were to examine the associations between lifetime experiences of spanking on the bottom and/or slapping on the hand and 3 adolescent outcomes: (a) mental health disorders, (b) physical health conditions, and (c) defiant behaviors, after adjusting for other types of childhood adversities and child maltreatment.
METHODS
Cross-sectional data from the provincially representative 2014 Ontario Child Health Study ( = 6,537 dwellings, response rate = 50.8%) were used. The current study focused on one selected child aged 14 to 17 years within a household ( = 1,883) with data collected from the adolescent and the parent/caregiver. Logistic regression models were used to identify associations with lifetime experiences of spanking/slapping 3 or more times (vs. 0 to 2 times).
RESULTS
Lifetime spanking/slapping was independently associated with increased odds of mental health disorders, physical health conditions, and defiant behaviors in adolescence after adjusting for childhood adversities and child maltreatment (unadjusted and adjusted odds ratios ranging from 1.29 to 2.19).
CONCLUSIONS
These findings suggest that lifetime spanking/slapping is uniquely associated with harmful mental, physical, and behavioral outcomes in adolescence, and efforts should focus on its prevention.
Topics: Adolescent; Child; Child Abuse; Cross-Sectional Studies; Humans; Mental Health; Parents; Punishment
PubMed: 33686872
DOI: 10.1177/07067437211000632 -
Biological Psychiatry Jun 2020A clinical hallmark of alcohol use disorder is persistent drinking despite potential adverse consequences. The ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and dorsomedial...
BACKGROUND
A clinical hallmark of alcohol use disorder is persistent drinking despite potential adverse consequences. The ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) are positioned to exert top-down control over subcortical regions, such as the nucleus accumbens shell (NAcS) and basolateral amygdala, which encode positive and negative valence of ethanol (EtOH)-related stimuli. Prior rodent studies have implicated these regions in regulation of punished EtOH self-administration (EtOH-SA).
METHODS
We conducted in vivo electrophysiological recordings in mouse vmPFC and dmPFC to obtain neuronal correlates of footshock-punished EtOH-SA. Ex vivo recordings were performed in NAcS D receptor-expressing medium spiny neurons receiving vmPFC input to examine punishment-related plasticity in this pathway. Optogenetic photosilencing was employed to assess the functional contribution of the vmPFC, dmPFC, vmPFC projections to NAcS, or vmPFC projections to basolateral amygdala, to punished EtOH-SA.
RESULTS
Punishment reduced EtOH lever pressing and elicited aborted presses (lever approach followed by rapid retraction). Neurons in the vmPFC and dmPFC exhibited phasic firing to EtOH lever presses and aborts, but only in the vmPFC was there a population-level shift in coding from lever presses to aborts with punishment. Closed-loop vmPFC, but not dmPFC, photosilencing on a postpunishment probe test negated the reduction in EtOH lever presses but not in aborts. Punishment was associated with altered plasticity at vmPFC inputs to D receptor-expressing medium spiny neurons in the NAcS. Photosilencing vmPFC projections to the NAcS, but not to the basolateral amygdala, partially reversed suppression of EtOH lever presses on probe testing.
CONCLUSIONS
These findings demonstrate a key role for the vmPFC in regulating EtOH-SA after punishment, with implications for understanding the neural basis of compulsive drinking in alcohol use disorder.
Topics: Animals; Ethanol; Mice; Nucleus Accumbens; Prefrontal Cortex; Punishment; Self Administration
PubMed: 31937415
DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2019.10.030 -
International Journal of Environmental... Oct 2021Construction safety is related to the life and health of construction workers and has always been a hot issue of concern for government and construction units. The...
Construction safety is related to the life and health of construction workers and has always been a hot issue of concern for government and construction units. The government can use "construction safety education" to reduce the probability of safety accidents in the construction process and avoid the loss of life and property of construction workers. To encourage construction units to provide safety education for construction workers before construction starts and promote construction workers to actively participate in safety education. In this paper, a tripartite evolutionary game model of government-construction units-construction workers is established, and the factors affecting each party's behavior strategy are comprehensively analyzed. Firstly, evolutionary game theory is used to investigate the influence of different behavior strategies among government, construction units, and construction workers on the behavior strategies of the other two parties. Secondly, according to the events in different situations, the influence of critical factors on the evolution process of the model is analyzed. On this basis, combined with the construction experience and construction data of actual construction projects, the established model and preliminary conclusions are verified. Finally, a sensitivity analysis of all parameters is carried out. The results show that: (1) The government's enhancement of reward and punishment is conducive to promoting the choice of "providing safety education" for construction orders and the choice of "actively participating in safety education" for construction workers, but the excessive reward will lead to the government's unwillingness of participation; (2) The reasonable reward and punishment mechanism set by the government must meet the condition that the sum of rewards and punishments for all parties is more significant than their speculative gains, to ensure the construction safety under the evolutionary stability; (3) Increasing welfare subsidies for construction workers who choose to participate in safety education actively is an effective way to avoid unwilling participation of construction workers.
Topics: Accidents; China; Construction Industry; Game Theory; Humans; Punishment; Reward
PubMed: 34639703
DOI: 10.3390/ijerph181910392 -
Current Biology : CB Jun 2015An important, and perhaps uniquely human, mechanism for maintaining cooperation against free riders is third-party punishment. Our closest living relatives, chimpanzees,...
An important, and perhaps uniquely human, mechanism for maintaining cooperation against free riders is third-party punishment. Our closest living relatives, chimpanzees, will not punish third parties even though they will do so when personally affected. Until recently, little attention has been paid to how punishment and a sense of justice develop in children. Children respond to norm violations. They are more likely to share with a puppet that helped another individual as opposed to one who behaved harmfully, and they show a preference for seeing a harmful doll rather than a victim punished. By 6 years of age, children will pay a cost to punish fictional and real peers, and the threat of punishment will lead preschoolers to behave more generously. However, little is known about what motivates a sense of justice in children. We gave 3- and 5-year-old children--the youngest ages yet tested--the opportunity to remove items and prevent a puppet from gaining a reward for second- and third-party violations (experiment 1), and we gave 3-year-olds the opportunity to restore items (experiment 2). Children were as likely to engage in third-party interventions as they were when personally affected, yet they did not discriminate among the different sources of harm for the victim. When given a range of options, 3-year-olds chose restoration over removal. It appears that a sense of justice centered on harm caused to victims emerges early in childhood and highlights the value of third-party interventions for human cooperation.
Topics: Child, Preschool; Humans; Models, Psychological; Moral Development; Neuropsychological Tests; Punishment; Social Justice
PubMed: 26096976
DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2015.05.014 -
Proceedings of the National Academy of... Nov 2014Many interactions in modern human societies are among strangers. Explaining cooperation in such interactions is challenging. The two most prominent explanations...
Many interactions in modern human societies are among strangers. Explaining cooperation in such interactions is challenging. The two most prominent explanations critically depend on individuals' willingness to punish defectors: In models of direct punishment, individuals punish antisocial behavior at a personal cost, whereas in models of indirect reciprocity, they punish indirectly by withholding rewards. We investigate these competing explanations in a field experiment with real-life interactions among strangers. We find clear evidence of both direct and indirect punishment. Direct punishment is not rewarded by strangers and, in line with models of indirect reciprocity, is crowded out by indirect punishment opportunities. The existence of direct and indirect punishment in daily life indicates the importance of both means for understanding the evolution of cooperation.
Topics: Aggression; Humans; Models, Theoretical; Punishment; Violence
PubMed: 25349390
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1413170111 -
Acta Psychologica Jul 2023Third-party punishment (TPP) effectively promotes social cooperation and maintains social norms in which equity plays a decisive role. When third-party and players are...
Third-party punishment (TPP) effectively promotes social cooperation and maintains social norms in which equity plays a decisive role. When third-party and players are affiliated with different groups, there are two distinct phenomena-in-group favoritism (IGF) and black sheep effect (BSE)-in a certain environment. Equity loses its function as a benchmark when the environment is uncertain (de Kwaadsteniet et al., 2013). Thus, we hypothesized that individuals have a stronger IGF because there is more room for interpretations of their behaviors when an uncertain environment results in ambiguous social norms. We utilized a common resource dilemma (CRD) to manipulate the environmental uncertainty by varying the range of the resource size: a certain environment is represented by a resource size of fixed tokens (i.e., 500 tokens) and an uncertain one is represented by that of 300 to 700 tokens. Additionally, group affiliation is manipulated by the alumni relation between the third-party and players. The present study revealed that the uncertain environment led to stricter costly punishment. The experiment confirms the IGF rather than the BSE. We found boundary conditions between IGF and out-group derogation (OGD). When the players' harvest was not obviously violated, the size of TPP for a control group without group affiliation manipulation anchored those of the in-group and OGD occurred. Opposite, when the harvest was obviously violated, the size of TPP for the control group anchored those of the out-group and IGF occurred. The gender of the third-party affects its decision to punish, with men anchoring the control group's punishment to the in-group and showing OGD, whereas women anchoring the control group's punishment to the out-group and showing IGF.
Topics: Humans; Female; Cooperative Behavior; Uncertainty; Punishment; Social Behavior; Social Norms
PubMed: 37329843
DOI: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2023.103957