The evolution of altruistic punishment

Abstract

Both laboratory and field data suggest that people punish noncooperators even in one-shot interactions. Although such ''altruistic punishment'' may explain the high levels of cooperation in human societies, it creates an evolutionary puzzle: existing models suggest that altruistic cooperation among nonrelatives is evolutionarily stable only in small groups. Thus, applying such models to the evolution of altruistic punishment leads to the prediction that people will not incur costs to punish others to provide benefits to large groups of nonrelatives. However, here we show that an important asymmetry between altruistic cooperation and altruistic punishment allows altruistic punishment to evolve in populations engaged in one-time, anonymous interactions. This process allows both altruistic punishment and altruistic cooperation to be maintained even when groups are large and other parameter values approximate conditions that characterize cultural evolution in the small-scale societies in which humans lived for most of our prehistory.

The mentalizing network orchestrates the impact of parochial altruism on social norm enforcement

“…For example, a recent third-party punishment experiment in Papua New Guinea revealed strong favoritism toward a subject's own linguistic group in giving to others, and significantly greater punishment of individuals from another linguistic group (in comparison to those from the subject's own group) who committed a norm violation toward the subject's ingroup members [Bernhard et al, 2006]. The importance of parochial altruism for the understanding of human society is corroborated by recent theoretical and experimental research that has closely tied outgroup hostility to the evolution of human prosociality within groups [Boyd et al, 2003;Choi and Bowles, 2007] and prosociality within groups (ingroup favoritism) to the evolution of cultural groups [Efferson et al, 2008].…”

“…For instance, humans are willing to punish violators of social norms even at substantial personal costs [Boyd et al, 2003;Fehr and Gächter, 2002;Henrich, 2006]. A key element of the enforcement of many social norms, such as food-sharing norms in hunter-gatherer societies [Hill, 2002;Kaplan et al, 2000], is that people punish norm violators not only for direct transgressions against the punisher himself (termed second-party punishment), but also for norm violations against others (termed third-party punishment) [Bendor and Swistak, 2001;Sober and Wilson, 1998].…”

Why be nice? Psychological constraints on the evolution of cooperation

“…Although little new evidence has emerged to support this contention, a related explanation-harassment-may explain some instances of enforced cooperation in animals [8,47]. In humans, however, there is a rich literature describing the use of punishment in cooperative situations [48][49][50]. Some economists and anthropologists suggest that humans might have evolved a different and apparently unique form of cooperation called "strong reciprocity" [50].…”

“…In humans, however, there is a rich literature describing the use of punishment in cooperative situations [48][49][50]. Some economists and anthropologists suggest that humans might have evolved a different and apparently unique form of cooperation called "strong reciprocity" [50]. This combination of reciprocity and punishment has been defined by Gintis and colleagues as a "predisposition to cooperate with others and to punish those who violate the norms of cooperation, at personal cost, even when it is implausible to expect that these costs will be repaid either by others or at a later date" [49].…”

A phylogenetic approach to cultural evolution

“…Survivors, especially reproductive-age women, might integrate themselves into the victorious cultures, thus cultural extinction does not necessarily imply genetic extinction; but such migrants would have to learn the ways of their new community if they are to survive and reproduce among them. Several authors have argued that such population dynamics can lead to group-level selection occurring in human cultural evolution [6,[13][14][15] and could explain a range of uniquely human behaviours, from high-level cooperation with unrelated individuals [8,14,16] to ethnic markers and psychology [17]. Such processes could maintain the identity of discrete cultural groups even when genetic distinctions are more blurred or even absent.…”