Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

Human behaviour

Egalitarian motive and altruistic punishment (reply)

  • Brief Communications Arising
  • Published:

From Nature

View current issue Submit your manuscript

Abstract

Fehr and Gächter reply - Fowler et al. raise an important question1. They correctly argue that the desire to reduce inequality may motivate cooperators who altruistically punish free riders in our experiments2. Also, the evolutionary history of humans suggests that egalitarianism shaped many human cultures3 and that egalitarian motives may, therefore, be a powerful force behind the punishment of free riders. In addition, recently developed proximate theories4, which formalize the notion of inequality aversion, also suggest that egalitarian desires may be important. Fowler et al. contrast their egalitarianism hypothesis with our view that negative emotions against free riders drive punishment.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Figure 1: Mean expenditure on punishment as a function of the deviation of the punished group member's cooperation from the average cooperation of the other members.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Fowler, J. H., Johnson, T. & Smirnov, O. Nature doi:10.1038/nature03256 (2004).

  2. Fehr, E. & Gächter, S. Nature 415, 137–140 (2002).

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  3. Boehm, C. Curr. Anthropol. 34, 227–254 (1993).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Fehr, E. & Schmidt, K. M. Q. J. Econ. 114, 817–868 (1999).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Gintis, H. J. Theoret. Biol. 206, 169–179 (2000).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  6. Bowles, S. & Gintis, H. Theoret. Pop. Biol. 65, 17–28 (2004).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Falk, A. & Fischbacher, U. Games Econ. Behav. (in the press).

  8. Anderson, C. M. & Putterman, L. Games Econ. Behav. (in the press).

  9. Offerman, T. Eur. Econ. Rev. 46, 1423–1437 (2002).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Blount, S. Org. Behav. Hum. Dec. Proc. 63, 131–144 (1995).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Falk, A., Fehr, E. & Fischbacher, U. Econ. Inq. 41, 20–26 (2003).

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Zürich, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics, Zürich, 8006, Switzerland

    Ernst Fehr

  2. University of St Gallen, FEW–HSG, St Gallen, 9000, Switzerland

    Simon Gächter

Authors
  1. Ernst Fehr
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Simon Gächter
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ernst Fehr.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Fehr, E., Gächter, S. Egalitarian motive and altruistic punishment (reply). Nature 433, E1–E2 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature03257

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature03257

  • Springer Nature Limited

This article is cited by

Search

Navigation