Synonyms
Definition
Punitive sentiment is the desire to harm someone because of their behavior or because of their relative status.
Introduction
Punitive sentiment is the desire to harm someone – even when doing so incurs a personal cost to the punisher (Clutton-Brock and Parker 1995; Raihani et al. 2012). Punishment can be aimed at cheats in social interactions – this is typically called “responsible” or “justified” punishment. Punishment can also be aimed at cooperative, or helpful individuals, or meted out by the cheating individuals themselves – this is typically called “antisocial punishment” (Herrmann et al. 2008; Sylwester et al. 2013). (Henceforth, the word “punishment” refers only to responsible or justified punishment.) Administering punishment is costly to the punisher as well as to the target. To understand how punitive sentiment could be favored by natural selection, one therefore has to ask how punishers ultimately derive benefits from...
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
References
Andre, J.-B., & Morin, O. (2011). Questioning the cultural evolution of altruism. Journal of Evolutionary Biology, 24, 2531–2542.
Archetti, M., & Scheuring, I. (2012). Review game theory of public goods in one-shot social dilemmas without assortment. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 299(C), 9–20. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtbi.2011.06.018.
Balafoutas, L., Nikiforakis, N., & Rockenbach, B. (2014). Direct and indirect punishment among strangers in the field. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 111, 15924.
Baldassarri, D., & Grossman, G. (2011). Centralized sanctioning and legitimate authority promote cooperation in humans. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 108, 11023–11027. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1105456108.
Barclay, P. (2006). Reputational benefits for altruistic punishment. Evolution and Human Behavior, 27(5), 325–344.
Barclay, P., & Raihani, N. J. (2016). Partner choice versus punishment in human prisoner’s dilemmas. Evolution and Human Behavior, 37(4), 263–271. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2015.12.004.
Bell, A. V., Richerson, P. J., & McElreath, R. (2009). Culture rather than genes provides greater scope for the evolution of large-scale human prosociality. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 106(42), 17671–17674. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0903232106.
Bone, J. E., & Raihani, N. J. (2015). Human punishment is motivated by both a desire for revenge and a desire for equality. Evolution and Human Behavior, 36(4), 323–330. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2015.02.002.
Bone, J. E., Wallace, B., Bshary, R., & Raihani, N. J. (2015). The effect of power asymmetries on cooperation and punishment in a prisoner’s dilemma game. PLoS One, 10(1), e0117183. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0117183.
Bone, J. E., McAuliffe, K., & Raihani, N. J. (2016a). Exploring the motivations for punishment: Framing and country-level effects. PLoS One, 11(8), e0159769. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0159769.
Bone, J. E., Wallace, B., Bshary, R., & Raihani, N. J. (2016b). Power asymmetries and punishment in a prisoner’s dilemma with variable cooperative investment. PLoS One, 11(5), e0155773. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0155773.
Boyd, R., & Richerson, P. (1982). Cultural transmission and the evolution of cooperative behavior. Human Ecology, 10(3), 325–351.
Boyd, R., Gintis, H. M., Bowles, S., & Richerson, P. J. (2003). The evolution of altruistic punishment. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 100(6), 3531–3535.
Boyd, R., Gintis, H., & Bowles, S. (2010). Coordinated punishment of defectors sustains cooperation and can proliferate when rare. Science (New York, N.Y.), 328(5978), 617–620. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1183665.
Bryson, J., Mitchell, J., Powers, S., & Sylwester, K. (2014). Understanding and addressing cultural variation in costly antisocial punishment Springer, New York, (pp. 1–23).
Buckholtz, J., Asplund, C., Dux, P., Zald, D., Gore, J., Jones, O., & Marois, R. (2008). The neural correlates of third-party punishment. Neuron, 60(5), 930–940.
Charness, G., Cobo-Reyes, R., & Jiminez, N. (2008). An investment game with third-party intervention. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 68, 18–28.
Chavez, A. K., & Bicchieri, C. (2013). Third-party sanctioning and compensation behavior: Findings from the ultimatum game. Journal of Economic Psychology, 39, 268–277.
Clutton-Brock, T. H., & Parker, G. A. (1995). Punishment in animal societies. Nature, 373(6511), 209–216. https://doi.org/10.1038/373209a0.
Crockett, M. J., Ozdemir, Y., & Fehr, E. (2014). The value of vengeance and the demand for deterrence. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143, 2279–2286.
Dawes, C. T., Fowler, J. H., Johnson, T., McElreath, R., & Smirnov, O. (2007). Egalitarian motives in humans. Nature, 446(7137), 794–796.
De Quervain, D., Fischbacher, U., Treyer, V., Schellhammer, M., Schnyder, U., Buck, A., & Fehr, E. (2004). The neural basis of altruistic punishment. Science (New York, N.Y.), 305(5688), 1254.
Diekmann, A. (1993). Cooperation in an asymmetric volunteer’s dilemma game theory and experimental evidence. International Journal of Game Theory, 22(1), 75–85.
dos Santos, M., & Wedekind, C. (2015). Reputation based on punishment rather than generosity allows for evolution of cooperation in sizable groups. Evolution and Human Behavior, 36, 59. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2014.09.001.
dos Santos, M., Rankin, D. J., & Wedekind, C. (2011). The evolution of punishment through reputation. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences, 278, 371–377.
dos Santos, M., Rankin, D. J., & Wedekind, C. (2013). Human cooperation based on punishment reputation. Evolution; International Journal of Organic Evolution, 67(8), 2446–2450. https://doi.org/10.1111/evo.12108.
Dreber, A., Rand, D. G., Fudenberg, D., & Nowak, M. A. (2008). Winners don’t punish. Nature, 452(7185), 348–351.
El Mouden, C., Andre, J.-B., Morin, O., & Nettle, D. (2014). Cultural transmission and the evolution of human behaviour: A general approach based on the price equation. Journal of Evolutionary Biology, 27, 231–241.
Falk, A., Fehr, E., & Fischbacher, U. (2005). Driving forces behind informal sanctions. Econometrica, 73, 2017. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0262.2005.00644.x.
Fehl, K., Sommerfeld, R. D., Semmann, D., Krambeck, H.-J., & Milinski, M. (2012). I dare you to punish me-vendettas in games of cooperation. PLoS One, 7(9), e45093. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0045093.
Fehr, E., & Fischbacher, U. (2004). Third-party punishment and social norms. Evolution and Human Behavior, 25(2), 63–87.
Fehr, E., & Gachter, S. (2002). Altruistic punishment in humans. Nature, 415(6868), 137–140.
FeldmanHall, O., Sokol-Hessner, P., Van Bavel, J. J., & Phelps, E. A. (2014). Fairness violations elicit greater punishment on behalf of another than for oneself. Nature Communications, 5, 5306. https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms6306.
Gardner, A. (2008). The price equation. Current Biology: CB, 18(5), R198.
Gardner, A., & West, S. A. (2004). Ecology. Spite among siblings. Science (New York, N.Y.), 305(5689), 1413–1414. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1103635.
Guala, F. (2012). Reciprocity: Weak or strong? What punishment experiments do (and do not) demonstrate. The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 35(1), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X11000069.
Herrmann, B., Thöni, C., & Gachter, S. (2008). Antisocial punishment across societies. Science (New York, N.Y.), 319(5868), 1362–1367. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1153808.
Johnson, T., Dawes, C. T., Fowler, J. H., McElreath, R., & Smirnov, O. (2009). The role of egalitarian motives in altruistic punishment. Economics Letters, 102(3), 192–194. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econlet.2009.01.003.
Jordan, J. J., & Rand, D. G. (2017). Third-party punishment as a costly signal of high continuation probabilities in repeated games. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 421, 189–202. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtbi.2017.04.004.
Jordan, J. J., Hoffman, M., Bloom, P., & Rand, D. G. (2016). Third-party punishment as a costly signal of trustworthiness. Nature, 530(7591), 473–476. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature16981.
Krasnow, M. M., Delton, A. W., Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. (2016). Looking under the hood of third-party punishment reveals design for personal benefit. Psychological Science, 27(3), 405–418. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797615624469.
Lamba, S., & Mace, R. (2010). People recognise when they are really anonymous in an economic game. Evolution and Human Behavior, 31, 271–278.
Lamba, S., & Mace, R. (2011). Demography and ecology drive variation in cooperation across human populations. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 108, 14426–14430.
Lehmann, L., Rousset, F., Roze, D., & Keller, L. (2007). Strong reciprocity or strong ferocity? A population genetic view of the evolution of altruistic punishment. American Naturalist, 170(1), 21–36.
Leibbrandt, A., & Lopez-Pérez, R. (2011). The dark side of altruistic third-party punishment. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 55(5), 761–784. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022002711408010.
Leibbrandt, A., & Lopez-Pérez, R. (2014). Different carrots and different sticks: Do we reward and punish differently than we approve and disapprove? Theory and Decision, 76, 95–118.
Lotz, S., Okimoto, T. G., Schlosser, T., & Fetchenhauer, D. (2011). Punitive versus compensatory reactions to injustice: Emotional antecedents to third-party interventions. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 47, 477–480.
Marczyk, J. (2017). Human punishment is not primarily motivated by inequality. PLoS One, 12(2), e0171298. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0171298.
Mathew, S., & Boyd, R. (2011). Punishment sustains large-scale cooperation in prestate warfare. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 108(28), 11375–11380. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1105604108/-/DCSupplemental.
McCullough, M. E., Kurzban, R., & Tabak, B. A. (2013). Cognitive systems for revenge and forgiveness. The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 36(01), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X11002160.
Morin, O. (2014). Is cooperation a maladaptive by-product of social learning? The dociility hypothesis reconsidered. Biological Theory, 9, 286–295.
Nikiforakis, N. (2008). Feedback, punishment and cooperation in public-good experiments. SSRN Electronic Journal. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1153350.
Nikiforakis, N., & Engelmann, D. (2011). Altruistic punishment and the threat of feuds. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 78(3), 319–332. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2011.01.017.
Pedersen, E. J., Kurzban, R., & McCullough, M. E. (2013). Do humans really punish altruistically? A closer look. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences, 280, 20122723.
Price, M. E., Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. (2002). Punitive sentiment as an anti-free rider psychological device. Evolution and Human Behavior, 23(3), 203–231. https://doi.org/10.1016/s1090-5138(01)00093-9.
Raihani, N. J., & Bshary, R. (2011). The evolution of punishment in n-player public goods games: A volunteer’s dilemma. Evolution; International Journal of Organic Evolution, 65(10), 2725–2728. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1558-5646.2011.01383.x.
Raihani, N. J., & Bshary, R. (2015a). The reputation of punishers. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 30(2), 98–103. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2014.12.003.
Raihani, N. J., & Bshary, R. (2015b). Third-party punishers are rewarded, but third-party helpers even more so. Evolution; International Journal of Organic Evolution, 69(4), 993–1003. https://doi.org/10.1111/evo.12637.
Raihani, N. J., & Bshary, R. (2015c). Why humans might help strangers. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 9, 2531. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2015.00039.
Raihani, N. J., & McAuliffe, K. (2012). Human punishment is motivated by inequity aversion, not a desire for reciprocity. Biology Letters, 8(5), 802–804. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2012.0470.
Raihani, N. J., Thornton, A., & Bshary, R. (2012). Punishment and cooperation in nature. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 27(5), 288–295. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2011.12.004.
Rand, D. G. (2016). Cooperation, fast and slow meta-analytic evidence for a theory of social heuristics and self-interested deliberation. Psychological Science, 27, 1192. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797616654455.
Seielstad, M. T., Minch, E., & Cavalli-Sforza, L. L. (1998). Genetic evidence for a higher female migration rate in humans. Nature Genetics, 20(3), 278–280. https://doi.org/10.1038/3088.
Sylwester, K., Herrmann, B., & Bryson, J. (2013). Homo homini lupus? Explaining antisocial punishment. Journal of Neuroscience, Psychology, and Economics, 6, 167–188.
West, S. A., El Mouden, C., & Gardner, A. (2011). Sixteen common misconceptions about the evolution of cooperation in humans. Evolution and Human Behavior, 32(4), 231–262.
Yamagishi, T. (1986). The provision of a sanctioning system as a public good. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51(1), 110–116. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.51.1.110.
Yamagishi, T., & Mifune, N. (2016). Parochial altruism: Does it explain modern human group psychology? Current Opinion in Psychology, 7, 39–43. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2015.07.015.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Section Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG
About this entry
Cite this entry
Raihani, N. (2018). Punitive Sentiment. In: Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_1623-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_1623-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-16999-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-16999-6
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Behavioral Science and PsychologyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences