Definition
A willingness to impose sanctions on norm violators at the punisher’s own cost.
Introduction
The theory of strong reciprocity is regarded today as one of the most influential attempts at explaining the evolution of human cooperation (Bowles and Gintis 2011; Fehr and Fischbacher 2004, 2005; Fehr et al. 2002; Gintis et al. 2003). It denotes a predisposition to cooperate with others and a willingness to punish at personal cost those who violate cooperative norms. This altruistic form of punishment has been well documented both in real life and in laboratory experiments. It is altruistic in the sense that it occurs even in situations where no future benefits for the punishing individual or the individual’s genes are possible: in one-shot scenarios among strangers under conditions of strict anonymity (Bowles and Gintis 2011; Fehr and Fischbacher 2005; Gintis et al. 2003).
Experimental Evidence
In the...
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References
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Paál, T. (2017). Altruistic Punishment and Strong Reciprocity. In: Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_3768-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_3768-1
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