From: Keith Henson (hkhenson@rogers.com)
Date: Fri 14 Feb 2003 - 03:06:44 GMT
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/DailyNews/punishment020109.html
This is related to human motivation, and motivation is important to which
memes get distributed or opposed. More about enforcing social behavior.
Keith
Anger and Punishment
Scientists Explain How Getting
Mad Can Lead to Good Will
By Amanda Onion
Jan. 9 — Do unto others as you would have them do unto you … and if they
don't do the same, punish them.
New findings suggest it may be time to expand the usual interpretations of
altruism. Rather than including just acts of generosity and goodness, the
term should also incorporate the concept of altruistic punishment, studies
show.
"The definition of altruism in biology doesn't have anything to do with
intentions," explained Samuel Bowles, an economist at the Santa Fe
Institute. "It has to do with bearing a burden that is costly to oneself,
but that benefits others."
Not only can punishment be altruistic, the new study demonstrates it's also
critical for maintaining a healthy society.
"Most people think when you punish someone, you do it for your own
benefit," said David Sloan Wilson, a psychobiologist at the State
University of New York in Binghamton and author of the book Unto Others.
"But if the punishment helps the public, it's not selfish, but selfless."
Punishment Game
To prove that people are willing to undergo personal cost to punish others,
Ernst Fehr of the Institute of Advanced Studies at the University of Zurich
and colleagues devised a financial game in which students were given 20
monetary units (about $23.95) and then told to either contribute their
resources to a communal pot, or keep the money at a cost to the group.
The more people gave to the communal pot, the more each member of the group
reaped once the game was done. But if people refused to donate, the group
earned much less.
Then Fehr added a twist. Players were given the option of punishing those
who refused to donate to the pot. Each time a player issued a punishment
against another, the punished player was deprived of three monetary units
and the punisher was deprived of one.
Even though the punisher never played with the same people twice — and so
could not hope to benefit later — more than 80 percent of the students
opted to sacrifice one of their own units to punish stingy players.
The punishment worked: Those punished contributed more money in later
games. And the series of games that included the option to punish ended up
earning group members much more money than those who had no punishment option.
Altruistic Punishment at Work, in War
Evidence of altruistic punishment is also pervasive in the real world, says
Fehr, including among work groups.
"Free-riders who pretend to be ill although they could in fact work are
typically informally sanctioned by the other members of the work team,"
said Fehr, who published the results of his study in this week's issue of
the journal Nature.
The current war against terrorism can also be explained, at least partly,
by altruistic punishment.
Dustin Hammond of Park Forest, Ill., for example, recently decided to meet
with Air Force recruiters in the months following the Sept. 11 attacks.
Even though the chances are slim that terrorists might attack his small
hometown or that of his family members, Hammond was driven to risk his life
to take part in the military efforts against terrorism.
"I'd like to serve my country. That tragedy really aggravated me," he told
the Chicago Tribune.
Most might find it easy to understand Hammond's motivations. But it's the
kind of behavior that has flummoxed biologists for decades.
"It's always been a puzzle," said Wilson. "Why would a person decrease
their own fitness for the fitness of others?"
Selfless Anger
Some theories have suggested there can be selfish motivations for
altruistic acts. Sacrificing for family, for example, can still advance an
altruist's genes since family members share gene lines. Another theory,
known as reciprocal altruism or "tit for tat," suggests that people help
others because they expect to receive help in return.
Neither of those explanations can explain why players elected to punish
others in the Fehr experiment.
Instead, the Fehr study and others show that the presence of altruists in a
group increases the overall fitness of the group — no matter the
consequence to the individual — so altruistic acts can make evolutionary
sense.
And, unlike most altruism, altruistic punishment is inspired less by good
will than by a factor that biologists have so far rarely considered: anger.
"Not everyone is public-spirited — you might or might not be motivated to
help a group," said Wilson. "But when you see a cheater, you get mad. And
anger is what recruits this separate group of altruistic punishers."
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