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Brain : a Journal of Neurology May 2018The cerebral correlates of altruistic decisions have increasingly attracted the interest of neuroscientists. To date, investigations on the neural underpinnings of...
The cerebral correlates of altruistic decisions have increasingly attracted the interest of neuroscientists. To date, investigations on the neural underpinnings of altruistic decisions have primarily been conducted in healthy adults undergoing functional neuroimaging as they engaged in decisions to punish third parties. The chief purpose of the present study was to investigate altruistic decisions following focal brain damage with a novel altruistic decision task. In contrast to studies that have focused either on altruistic punishment or donation, the Altruistic Decision Task allows players to anonymously punish or donate to 30 charitable organizations involved with salient societal issues such as abortion, nuclear energy and civil rights. Ninety-four Vietnam War veterans with variable patterns of penetrating traumatic brain injury and 28 healthy veterans who also served in combat participated in the study as normal controls. Participants were asked to invest $1 to punish or reward real societal organizations, or keep the money for themselves. Associations between lesion distribution and performance on the task were analysed with multivariate support vector regression, which enables the assessment of the joint contribution of multiple regions in the determination of a given behaviour of interest. Our main findings were: (i) bilateral dorsomedial prefrontal lesions increased altruistic punishment, whereas lesions of the right perisylvian region and left temporo-insular cortex decreased punishment; (ii) altruistic donations were increased by bilateral lesions of the dorsomedial parietal cortex, whereas lesions of the right posterior superior temporal sulcus and middle temporal gyri decreased donations; (iii) altruistic punishment and donation were only weakly correlated, emphasizing their dissociable neuroanatomical associations; and (iv) altruistic decisions were not related to post-traumatic personality changes. These findings indicate that altruistic punishment and donation are determined by largely non-overlapping cerebral regions, which have previously been implicated in social cognition and moral experience such as evaluations of intentionality and intuitions of justice and morality.10.1093/brain/awy064_video1awy064media15758316955001.
Topics: Aged; Altruism; Brain Injuries, Traumatic; Brain Mapping; Decision Making; Humans; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Male; Mental Status Schedule; Middle Aged; Neuropsychological Tests; Punishment; Retrospective Studies; Tomography Scanners, X-Ray Computed; Trauma Severity Indices; Veterans
PubMed: 29590314
DOI: 10.1093/brain/awy064 -
International Journal of Environmental... Jan 2023Physical and other types of punishment remain common in Bangladesh, despite overwhelming evidence of their harm and worldwide efforts to decrease their use. One of the...
Physical and other types of punishment remain common in Bangladesh, despite overwhelming evidence of their harm and worldwide efforts to decrease their use. One of the strategic priorities of Save the Children in Bangladesh's Child Protection Program is to protect children from physical and humiliating punishment in homes, schools, and other settings. Save the Children in Bangladesh selected the Positive Discipline in Everyday Parenting (PDEP) Program to provide parents with alternatives to physical punishment that comply with human rights standards while strengthening relationships and understanding of child development. High-risk communities where children are particularly vulnerable were selected for this project. The PDEP program was delivered to 857 parents living in lower socioeconomic areas of Bangladesh, including ethnic minority groups, and parents living in urban slums of Dhaka and rural brothel areas. Due to the low levels of education of the participants (almost two-thirds of participants had not completed elementary school), simplified pre and posttests were utilized. Following program completion, parents' approval of both physical punishment and punishment in general declined; they were less likely to view typical parent-child conflicts as intentional misbehavior and were less reactive to frustration. In addition, parents indicated an increased understanding of the positive discipline and more confidence in their parenting skills. Before taking PDEP, 64% of the parents often felt like they just did not know what to do as a parent, compared to 34% following program completion. PDEP demonstrated the potential to decrease the use of physical and humiliating punishments by parents living in high-risk communities in Bangladesh.
Topics: Humans; Child; Parenting; Bangladesh; Ethnicity; Minority Groups; Child Abuse; Violence; Punishment
PubMed: 36767241
DOI: 10.3390/ijerph20031873 -
Substance Use & Misuse Jul 2018Within the dual systems perspective, high reward sensitivity and low punishment sensitivity in conjunction with deficits in cognitive control may contribute to high...
BACKGROUND
Within the dual systems perspective, high reward sensitivity and low punishment sensitivity in conjunction with deficits in cognitive control may contribute to high levels of risk taking, such as substance use.
OBJECTIVE
The current study examined whether the individual components of effortful control (inhibitory control, attentional control, and activation control) serve as regulators and moderate the association between reward or punishment sensitivity and substance use behaviors.
METHOD
A total of 1,808 emerging adults from a university setting (Mean age = 19.48; 72% female) completed self-report measures of reward and punishment sensitivity, effortful control, and substance use.
RESULTS
Findings indicated significant two-way interactions for punishment sensitivity and inhibitory control for alcohol and marijuana use. The form of these interactions revealed a significant negative association between punishment sensitivity and alcohol and marijuana use at low levels of inhibitory control. No significant interactions emerged for reward sensitivity or other components of effortful control.
CONCLUSIONS
The current findings provide preliminary evidence suggesting the dual systems theorized to influence risk taking behavior interact to make joint contributions to health risk behaviors such as substance use in emerging adults.
Topics: Adolescent; Adult; Alcohol Drinking; Female; Humans; Internal-External Control; Male; Marijuana Use; Punishment; Reward; Self Concept; Temperament; Young Adult
PubMed: 29308966
DOI: 10.1080/10826084.2017.1407790 -
Journal of the Experimental Analysis of... Sep 1965Responses of pigeons were maintained by a VI schedule of food reinforcement. Conditioned punishment was programmed by having these responses concurrently produce an...
Responses of pigeons were maintained by a VI schedule of food reinforcement. Conditioned punishment was programmed by having these responses concurrently produce an originally neutral stimulus. The effectiveness of this response-contingent stimulus was maintained by infrequent and prearranged stimulus-shock pairings delivered independently of responses. This conditioned punishment procedure reduced the overall response rate as long as the procedure was in effect. The extent and durability of the reduction was a function of the intensity of the shock that was paired with the stimulus. Analysis of the reduction in the overall response rate revealed: (1) a reduction of responses occurring in the absence of the response-contingent stimulus, which was designated as a "punishing" effect, and (2) a reduction of responses during the response-contingent stimulus, which was designated as a "suppressive" effect.
Topics: Animals; Birds; Columbidae; Conditioning, Classical; Conditioning, Psychological; Electroshock; Food; Punishment; Reinforcement, Psychology; Research
PubMed: 14342363
DOI: 10.1901/jeab.1965.8-279 -
Cell Reports Dec 2023Learning to seek rewards and avoid punishments, based on positive and negative choice outcomes, is essential for human survival. Yet, the neural underpinnings of outcome...
Learning to seek rewards and avoid punishments, based on positive and negative choice outcomes, is essential for human survival. Yet, the neural underpinnings of outcome valence in the human brainstem and the extent to which they differ in reward and punishment learning contexts remain largely elusive. Here, using simultaneously acquired electroencephalography and functional magnetic resonance imaging data, we show that during reward learning the substantia nigra (SN)/ventral tegmental area (VTA) and locus coeruleus are initially activated following negative outcomes, while the VTA subsequently re-engages exhibiting greater responses for positive than negative outcomes, consistent with an early arousal/avoidance response and a later value-updating process, respectively. During punishment learning, we show that distinct raphe nucleus and SN subregions are activated only by negative outcomes with a sustained post-outcome activity across time, supporting the involvement of these brainstem subregions in avoidance behavior. Finally, we demonstrate that the coupling of these brainstem structures with other subcortical and cortical areas helps to shape participants' serial choice behavior in each context.
Topics: Humans; Punishment; Reward; Ventral Tegmental Area; Substantia Nigra; Avoidance Learning; Magnetic Resonance Imaging
PubMed: 38100353
DOI: 10.1016/j.celrep.2023.113589 -
Proceedings. Biological Sciences Mar 2019Sustaining cooperation among unrelated individuals is a fundamental challenge in biology and the social sciences. In human society, this problem can be solved by...
Sustaining cooperation among unrelated individuals is a fundamental challenge in biology and the social sciences. In human society, this problem can be solved by establishing incentive institutions that reward cooperators and punish free-riders. Most of the previous studies have focused on which incentives promote cooperation best. However, a higher cooperation level does not always imply higher group fitness, and only incentives that lead to higher fitness can survive in social evolution. In this paper, we compare the efficiencies of three types of institutional incentives, namely, reward, punishment, and a mixture of reward and punishment, by analysing the group fitness at the stable equilibria of evolutionary dynamics. We find that the optimal institutional incentive is sensitive to decision errors. When there is no error, a mixture of reward and punishment can lead to high levels of cooperation and fitness. However, for intermediate and large errors, reward performs best, and one should avoid punishment. The failure of punishment is caused by two reasons. First, punishment cannot maintain a high cooperation level. Second, punishing defectors almost always reduces the group fitness. Our findings highlight the role of reward in human cooperation. In an uncertain world, the institutional reward is not only effective but also efficient.
Topics: Biological Evolution; Cooperative Behavior; Decision Making; Game Theory; Humans; Models, Biological; Models, Psychological; Motivation; Punishment; Reward
PubMed: 30914009
DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2019.0001 -
Proceedings of the National Academy of... Sep 2017Natural selection designs some social behaviors to depend on flexible learning processes, whereas others are relatively rigid or reflexive. What determines the balance...
Natural selection designs some social behaviors to depend on flexible learning processes, whereas others are relatively rigid or reflexive. What determines the balance between these two approaches? We offer a detailed case study in the context of a two-player game with antisocial behavior and retaliatory punishment. We show that each player in this game-a "thief" and a "victim"-must balance two competing strategic interests. Flexibility is valuable because it allows adaptive differentiation in the face of diverse opponents. However, it is also risky because, in competitive games, it can produce systematically suboptimal behaviors. Using a combination of evolutionary analysis, reinforcement learning simulations, and behavioral experimentation, we show that the resolution to this tension-and the adaptation of social behavior in this game-hinges on the game's learning dynamics. Our findings clarify punishment's adaptive basis, offer a case study of the evolution of social preferences, and highlight an important connection between natural selection and learning in the resolution of social conflicts.
Topics: Aggression; Cooperative Behavior; Humans; Learning; Punishment; Reward; Social Behavior; Social Control, Formal
PubMed: 28893996
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1704032114 -
Neuropsychopharmacology : Official... May 2022Punishment involves learning the relationship between actions and their adverse consequences. Both the acquisition and expression of punishment learning depend on the...
Punishment involves learning the relationship between actions and their adverse consequences. Both the acquisition and expression of punishment learning depend on the basolateral amygdala (BLA), but how BLA supports punishment remains poorly understood. To address this, we measured calcium (Ca) transients in BLA principal neurons during punishment. Male rats were trained to press two individually presented levers for food; when one of these levers also yielded aversive footshock, responding on this punished lever decreased relative to the other, unpunished lever. In rats with the Ca indicator GCaMP6f targeted to BLA principal neurons, we observed excitatory activity transients to the footshock punisher and inhibitory transients to lever-presses earning a reward. Critically, as rats learned punishment, activity around the punished response transformed from inhibitory to excitatory and similarity analyses showed that these punished lever-press transients resembled BLA transients to the punisher itself. Systemically administered benzodiazepine (midazolam) selectively alleviated punishment. Moreover, the degree to which midazolam alleviated punishment was associated with how much punished response-related BLA transients reverted to their pre-punishment state. Together, these findings show that punishment learning is supported by aversion-coding of instrumental responses in the BLA and that the anti-punishment effects of benzodiazepines are associated with a reversion of this aversion coding.
Topics: Animals; Basolateral Nuclear Complex; Benzodiazepines; Conditioning, Operant; Male; Midazolam; Punishment; Rats
PubMed: 34493829
DOI: 10.1038/s41386-021-01176-2 -
Scientific Reports Jan 2023Some human groups are organized hierarchically and some are distributed. Both types of groups occur in economic, political, and military domains, but it is unclear why...
Some human groups are organized hierarchically and some are distributed. Both types of groups occur in economic, political, and military domains, but it is unclear why hierarchical organizations are favored in certain contexts and distributed organizations are favored in others. I propose that these different organizational structures can be explained by human groups having different constraints on their ability to foster cooperation within the group. Human within-group cooperation is often maintained by monitoring and punishment. In hierarchical groups, monitoring and punishment are organized into tree-like command-and-control structures with supervisors responsible for monitoring the cooperation of their subordinates and punishing non-cooperators. By contrast, in distributed groups, monitoring is diffuse and punishment is collective. I propose that the organization of cooperative human groups is constrained by the costs of monitoring and punishment. I formalize this hypothesis with a model where individuals in a group cooperate to produce public goods while embedded in a network of monitoring and punishment responsibilities. I show that, when punishment costs are high and monitoring costs are low, socially-optimal monitoring and punishment networks are distributed. The size of these distributed networks is constrained by monitoring costs. However, when punishment costs are low, socially-optimal networks are hierarchical. Monitoring costs do not constrain the size of hierarchical networks but determine how many levels of supervision are required to foster cooperation in the hierarchical group. These results may explain the increasingly large and hierarchical groups throughout much of human history. They also suggest that the recent emergence of large-scale distributed organizations has been possible because new technologies, like the internet, have made monitoring costs extremely low.
Topics: Humans; Cooperative Behavior; Social Behavior; Group Processes; Punishment; Costs and Cost Analysis; Game Theory
PubMed: 36670128
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-23454-9 -
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