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Measuring Delay Discounting in Humans Using an Adjusting Amount Task
07:47

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Published on: January 9, 2016

Costly punishment across human societies.

Joseph Henrich1, Richard McElreath, Abigail Barr

  • 1Department of Anthropology, Emory University, 1557 Dickey Drive, Atlanta, GA 30322, USA. jhenric@emory.edu

Science (New York, N.Y.)
|June 24, 2006
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Humans exhibit costly punishment across diverse populations, a behavior linked to altruism and gene-culture coevolution. This willingness to punish inequality is a key factor in understanding human cooperation and sociality.

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Area of Science:

  • Evolutionary Psychology
  • Behavioral Economics
  • Cross-Cultural Studies

Background:

  • Human cooperation is foundational to sociality.
  • Costly punishment, even in one-shot interactions, is proposed as a key psychological element.
  • Previous research was limited to industrialized societies, hindering species-wide generalizations.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the universality of costly punishment in human behavior.
  • To examine cross-cultural variations in costly punishment.
  • To explore the relationship between costly punishment and altruistic behavior.

Main Methods:

  • Conducted behavioral experiments across 15 diverse populations worldwide.
  • Measured participants' willingness to administer costly punishment in response to unequal behavior.
  • Analyzed the covariance between costly punishment and altruistic behavior across populations.

Main Results:

  • All tested populations showed a willingness to administer costly punishment when faced with increased inequality.
  • Significant variation in the magnitude of costly punishment was observed across different populations.
  • Costly punishment demonstrated a positive covariance with altruistic behavior globally.

Conclusions:

  • Costly punishment is a widespread human behavior, not limited to industrialized societies.
  • The observed cross-cultural variation in punishment magnitude requires explanation within cooperation theories.
  • Findings support gene-culture coevolution models of human altruism and cooperation.