On Hotheads and Dirty Harries

2009/06/01 by Elise C. Seip, W. van Dijk, Mark Rotteveel · 2 citations
Neuroscience · Social Sciences · #Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment #Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation #Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies

paper · doi:10.1111/j.1749-6632.2009.04503.x

openalex publication_date 2009/06/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/15

Abstract

Recent research has shown that individuals are prepared to incur costs to punish non-cooperators, even in one-shot interactions. However, why would people punish non-cooperators with no apparent benefits for the punishers themselves? This behavior is also known as altruistic punishment. When defection is discovered, an individual evaluates this act as unfair, which could result in anger. We argue that although unfairness and anger are often intertwined, it is primarily the experience of anger and not the perception of unfairness that produces altruistic punishment. We briefly present recent data in line with the hypothesis that identifies anger as the underlying mechanism of altruistic punishment. Furthermore, additional influences regarding the occurrence of altruistic punishment, e.g., intentionality of the interaction partner, the role of satisfaction, and individual differences, are discussed.

Citations

• The role of positive emotions in positive psychology: The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions.
• The Evolution of Cooperation
• The genetical evolution of social behaviour. I
• Empathic neural responses are modulated by the perceived fairness of others
• Effects of trait anger and anger expression style on competitive attack responses in a wartime prisoner’s dilemma game
• Altruistic punishment in humans
• The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism

Cited by

• Altruistic punishment can help resolve tragedy of the commons social dilemmas
• Tragedy of the commons [wikipedia]