Third-party intervention, such as when a crowd stops a mugger, is common. Yet it seems irrational because it has real costs but may provide no personal benefits. In a laboratory analogue, the third-party-punishment game, third parties (“punishers”) will often spend real money to anonymously punish bad behavior directed at other people. A common explanation is that third-party punishment exists to maintain a cooperative society. We tested a different explanation: Third-party punishment results from a deterrence psychology for defending personal interests. Because humans evolved in small-scale, face-to-face social worlds, the mind infers that mistreatment of a third party predicts later mistreatment of oneself. We showed that when punishers do not have information about how they personally will be treated, they infer that mistreatment of other people predicts mistreatment of themselves, and these inferences predict punishment. But when information about personal mistreatment is available, it drives punishment. This suggests that humans’ punitive psychology evolved to defend personal interests.
BarclayP. (2006). Reputational benefits for altruistic punishment. Evolution and Human Behavior, 27, 325–344. doi:10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2006.01.003
2.
BaumardN.AndréJ.-B.SperberD. (2013). A mutualistic approach to morality: The evolution of fairness by partner choice. Behavioral & Brain Sciences, 36, 59–78. doi:10.1017/S0140525X11002202
3.
BrandtsJ.CharnessG. (2000). Hot vs. cold: Sequential responses and preference stability in experimental games. Experimental Economics, 2, 227–238. doi:10.1023/A:1009962612354
4.
BrosigJ.WeimannJ.YangC.-L. (2003). The hot versus cold effect in a simple bargaining experiment. Experimental Economics, 6, 75–90. doi:10.1023/A:1024204826499
5.
BuckholtzJ. W.AsplundC. L.DuxP. E.ZaldD. H.GoreJ. C.JonesO. D.MaroisR. (2008). The neural correlates of third-party punishment. Neuron, 60, 930–940. doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2008.10.016
6.
Burton-ChellewM. N.WestS. A. (2013). Prosocial preferences do not explain human cooperation in public-goods games. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 110, 216–221. doi:10.1073/pnas.1210960110
7.
Clutton-BrockT. H.ParkerG. A. (1995). Punishment in animal societies. Nature, 373, 209–216.
8.
DeltonA. W. (2010). A psychological calculus for welfare tradeoffs (Doctoral dissertation). Available from ProQuest Dissertations and Theses database. (UMI No. 3427833)
9.
DeltonA. W.KrasnowM. M.CosmidesL.ToobyJ. (2011). Evolution of direct reciprocity under uncertainty can explain human generosity in one-shot encounters. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 108, 13335–13340.
10.
DeltonA. W.RobertsonT. E. (2016). How the mind makes welfare tradeoffs: Evolution, computation, and emotion. Current Opinion in Psychology, 7, 12–16.
11.
DunbarR. I. M. (1993). Coevolution of neocortical size, group size and language in humans. Behavioral & Brain Sciences, 16, 681–694. doi:10.1017/S0140525X00032325
12.
FaulF.ErdfelderE.BuchnerA.LangA.-G. (2009). Statistical power analyses using G*Power 3.1: Tests for correlation and regression analyses. Behavior Research Methods, 41, 1149–1160. doi:10.3758/BRM.41.4.1149
13.
FehrE.FischbacherU. (2004). Third-party punishment and social norms. Evolution and Human Behavior, 25, 63–87. doi:10.1016/S1090-5138(04)00005-4
14.
FehrE.FischbacherU.GächterS. (2002). Strong reciprocity, human cooperation, and the enforcement of social norms. Human Nature, 13, 1–25.
15.
HaleyK. J.FesslerD. M. T. (2005). Nobody’s watching? Subtle cues affect generosity in an anonymous economic game. Evolution and Human Behavior, 26, 245–256.
16.
HaseltonM. G.BryantG. A.WilkeA.FrederickD. A.GalperinA.FrankenhuisW. E.MooreT. (2009). Adaptive rationality: An evolutionary perspective on cognitive bias. Social Cognition, 27, 733–763. doi:10.1521/soco.2009.27.5.733
17.
HenrichJ.EnsmingerJ.McElreathR.BarrA.BarrettC.BolyanatzA.. . . ZikerJ. (2010). Markets, religion, community size, and the evolution of fairness and punishment. Science, 327, 1480–1484. doi:10.1126/science.1182238
18.
HenrichJ.McElreathR.BarrA.EnsmingerJ.BarrettC.BolyanatzA.. . . ZikerJ. (2006). Costly punishment across human societies. Science, 312, 1767–1770. doi:10.1126/science.1127333
19.
HerrmannB.ThöniC.GächterS. (2008). Antisocial punishment across societies. Science, 319, 1362–1367. doi:10.1126/science.1153808
20.
JordanJ.McAuliffeK.RandD. (2015). The effects of endowment size and strategy method on third party punishment. Experimental Economics. Advance online publication. doi:10.1007/s10683-015-9466-8
21.
KenrickD. T.GriskeviciusV.SundieJ. M.LiN. P.LiY. J.NeubergS. L. (2009). Deep rationality: The evolutionary economics of decision making. Social Cognition, 27, 764–785. doi:10.1521/soco.2009.27.5.764
22.
KirkpatrickM.DeltonA. W.RobertsonT. E.de WitH. (2015). Prosocial effects of MDMA: A measure of generosity. Journal of Psychopharmacology, 29, 661–668. doi:10.1177/0269881115573806
23.
KrasnowM. M.CosmidesL.PedersenE. J.ToobyJ. (2012). What are punishment and reputation for?PLoS ONE, 7(9), Article e45662. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0045662
24.
KrasnowM. M.DeltonA. W. (in press). The sketch is blank: No evidence for an explanatory role for cultural group selection. Behavioral & Brain Sciences.
25.
KrasnowM. M.DeltonA. W.ToobyJ.CosmidesL. (2013). Meeting now suggests we will meet again: Implications for debates on the evolution of cooperation. Scientific Reports, 3, Article 1747. doi:10.1038/srep01747
26.
KurzbanR.DeScioliP.O’BrienE. (2007). Audience effects on moralistic punishment. Evolution and Human Behavior, 28, 75–84. doi:10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2006.06.001
27.
LiebermanD.ToobyJ.CosmidesL. (2007). The architecture of human kin detection. Nature, 44, 727–731.
28.
LoceyM. L.JonesB. A.RachlinH. (2011). Real and hypothetical rewards. Judgment and Decision Making, 6, 552–564.
29.
MarloweF. W.BerbesqueJ. C.BarrettC.BolyanatzA.GurvenM.TracerD. (2011). The ‘spiteful’ origins of human cooperation. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 278, 2159–2164. doi:10.1098/rspb.2010.2342
30.
MascletD.NoussairC.TuckerS.VillevalM.-C. (2003). Monetary and nonmonetary punishment in the voluntary contributions mechanism. The American Economic Review, 93, 366–380.
31.
McAuliffeK.JordanJ. J.WarnekenF. (2015). Costly third-party punishment in young children. Cognition, 134, 1–10. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2014.08.013
32.
MishraS. (2014). Decision-making under risk: Integrating perspectives from biology, economics, and psychology. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 18, 280–307. doi:10.1177/1088868314530517
33.
PedersenE. J.KurzbanR.McCulloughM. E. (2013). Do humans really punish altruistically? A closer look. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 280, 20122723. doi:10.1098/rspb.2012.2723
34.
PetersenM. B.SellA.ToobyJ.CosmidesL. (2012). To punish or repair? Evolutionary psychology and lay intuitions about modern criminal justice. Evolution and Human Behavior, 33, 682–695. doi:10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2012.05.003
35.
RaihaniN. J.GrutterA. S.BsharyR. (2010). Punishers benefit from third-party punishment in fish. Science, 327, 171. doi:10.1126/science.1183068
36.
RoosP.GelfandM.NauD.CarrR. (2014). High strength-of-ties and low mobility enable the evolution of third-party punishment. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 281, 20132661. doi:10.1098/rspb.2013.2661
37.
SparksA.BarclayP. (2013). Eye images increase generosity, but not for long: The limited effect of a false cue. Evolution and Human Behavior, 34, 317–322. doi:10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2013.05.001
38.
ToddP. M.GigerenzerG. (2007). Environments that make us smart: Ecological rationality. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 16, 167–171.
39.
ToobyJ.CosmidesL. (1992). The psychological foundations of culture. In BarkowJ. H.CosmidesL.ToobyJ. (Eds.), The adapted mind: Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture (pp. 19–136). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
WestS. A.GriffinA. S.GardnerA. (2007). Social semantics: Altruism, cooperation, mutualism, strong reciprocity and group selection. Journal of Evolutionary Biology, 20, 415–432.
42.
YamagishiT.HoritaY.TakagishiH.ShinadaM.TanidaS.CookK. S. (2009). The private rejection of unfair offers and emotional commitment. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 106, 11520–11523. doi:10.1073/pnas.0900636106
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
