Moral Sentiments and Material Interests behind Altruistic Third-Party Punishment

Social norms are ubiquitous in human life. Their role is essential in allowing cooperation to prevail, despite the presence of incentives to free ride. As far as norm enforcement devices are concerned, it would be impossible to have widespread social norms if second parties only enforced them. However, both the quantitative relevance and the motivations underlying altruistic punishment on the part of ‘unaffected’ third parties are still largely unexplored. This paper contributes to shed light on the issue, by means of an experimental design consisting of three treatments: a Dictator Game Treatment, a Third-Party Punishment Game Treatment (Fehr and Fischbacher, 2004) and a Metanorm Treatment, that is a variant of the Third-party Punishment Game where the Recipient can punish the third party. We find that third parties are willing to punish dictators (Fehr and Fischbacher, 2004; Ottone, 2008) and, in doing so, they are affected by ‘reference-dependent fairness’, rather than by the ‘egalitarian distribution norm’. By eliciting players’ normative expectations, it turns out that all of them expect a Dictator to transfer something – not half of the endowment. Consequently, the Observers’ levels of punishment are sensitive to their subjective sense of fairness. A positive relation between the level of punishment and the degree of negative subjective unfairness emerges. Subjective unfairness also affects Dictators’ behaviour: their actual transfers and their ideal transfer are not significantly different. Finally, we interestingly find that third parties are also sensitive to the receivers’ (credible) threat to punish them: as the Dictator’s transfer becomes lower and lower than the Observer’s ideal transfer, the Observer’s reaction is – other things being equal – significantly stronger in the Metanorm Treatment than in the Third-Party Punishment Game Treatment. Hence, despite their being to some extent genuinely nonstrategically motivated, also third parties – like second parties – are sensitive to the costs of punishing.Third-Party Punishment, Moral Sentiments, Material Interests, Subjective Unfairness, Social Norms

The nature of human altruism

Some of the most fundamental questions concerning our evolutionary origins, our social relations, and the organization of society are centred around issues of altruism and selfishness. Experimental evidence indicates that human altruism is a powerful force and is unique in the animal world. However, there is much individual heterogeneity and the interaction between altruists and selfish individuals is vital to human cooperation. Depending on the environment, a minority of altruists can force a majority of selfish individuals to cooperate or, conversely, a few egoists can induce a large number of altruists to defect. Current gene-based evolutionary theories cannot explain important patterns of human altruism, pointing towards the importance of both theories of cultural evolution as well as gene–culture co-evolution.altruism, selfishness, human altruism, evolution

Caste and Punishment: The Legacy of Caste Culture in Norm Enforcement

Well-functioning groups enforce social norms that restrain opportunism, but the social structure of a society may encourage or inhibit norm enforcement. Here we study how the exogenous assignment to different positions in an extreme social hierarchy – the caste system – affects individuals' willingness to punish violations of a cooperation norm. Although we control for individual wealth, education, and political participation, low caste individuals exhibit a much lower willingness to punish norm violations that hurt members of their own caste, suggesting a cultural difference across caste status in the concern for members of one's own community. The lower willingness to punish may inhibit the low caste's ability to sustain collective action and so may contribute to its economic vulnerability.social norms, informal sanctions, third party punishment, endogenous social preferences, social exclusion, collective action, caste

Caste and punishment : the legacy of caste culture in norm enforcement

Well-functioning groups enforce social norms that restrain opportunism, but the social structure of a society may encourage or inhibit norm enforcement. This paper studies how the exogenous assignment to different positions in an extreme social hierarchy - the caste system - affects individuals'willingness to punish violations of a cooperation norm. Although the analysis controls for individual wealth, education, and political participation, low-caste individuals exhibit a much lower willingness to punish norm violations that hurt members of their own caste, suggesting a cultural difference across caste status in the concern for members of one’s own community. The lower willingness to punish may inhibit the low caste’s ability to sustain collective action and so may contribute to its economic vulnerability.Gender and Social Development,Corruption&Anitcorruption Law,Anthropology,Access to Finance,Social Inclusion&Institutions

Non-Governmental Public Norm Enforcement in Large Societies as a Two-Stage Game of Voluntary Public Good Provision.

In small groups, norm enforcement is achieved through mutual punishment and reward. In large societies, norms are enforced by specialists such as government officials. However, not every public cause is overseen by states, for instance those organized at the international level. This paper shows how non-governmental norm enforcement can emerge as a decentralized equilibrium. As a first stage, individuals voluntarily contribute to a non-governmental agency that produces an incentive system. The second stage is the provision of a public good on the basis of private contributions. The incentive system punishes and rewards deviations from the norm for contributions by means of public approval or disapproval of behavior. It is shown that, even in large populations, nongovernmental norm enforcement can be supported in a non-cooperative equilibrium of utility-maximizing individuals.

The evolution of morality and the end of economic man

1871 saw the publication of two major treatises in economics, with self-seeking economic man at their center. In the same year Darwin published The Descent of Man, which emphasized sympathy and cooperation as well as self-interest, and contained a powerful argument that morality has evolved in humans by natural selection. Essentially this stance is supported by modern research. This paper considers the nature of morality and how it has evolved. It reconciles Darwin's notion that a developed morality requires language and deliberation (and is thus unique to humans), with his other view that moral feelings have a long-evolved and biologically-inherited basis. The social role of morality and its difference with altruism is illustrated by an agent-based simulation. The fact that humans combine both moral and selfish dispositions has major implications for the social sciences and obliges us to abandon the pre-eminent notion of selfish economic man. Economic policy must take account of our moral nature.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

An Economic Theory of Academic Engagement Norms: The Struggle for Popularity and Normative Hegemony in Secondary Schools

[Excerpt] Why and how do groups create norms? Kenneth Arrow proposed that “norms of social behavior, including ethical and moral codes, ….are reactions of society to compensate for market failure”. This internalize the real externalities explanation for norms is also standard among rational choice theorists in sociology. The situation becomes more complex when we recognize some actions create positive externalities for some individuals and negative externalities for others. Often this results in no norm being established. However, sometimes one segment of a social system has normative hegemony and enforces norms that enhance their power and prestige at the expense of other groups. Norms regarding caste in India, for example, were functional for Brahmins but humiliating for Harijans. Caste and status norms of this type will also be referred to as “Honor us; Not them” norms. Such norms arise when one group is much more powerful (has greater ability to enforce their preferred social norm) than other groups and it imposes its will on others. An additional requirement is that the people who oppose the norm established by the dominant group must be unable or unwilling to leave the social system in which the norm operates

Strong Reciprocity, Human Cooperation and the Enforcement of Social Norms

This paper provides strong evidence challenging the self-interest assumption that dominates the behavioral sciences and much evolutionary thinking. The evidence indicates that many people have a tendency to voluntarily cooperate, if treated fairly, and to punish non-cooperators. We call this behavioral propensity ‘strong reciprocity’ and show empirically that it can lead to almost universal cooperation in circumstances in which purely self-interested behavior would cause a complete breakdown of cooperation. In addition, we show that people are willing to punish those who behaved unfairly towards a third person or who defected in a Prisoner’s Dilemma game with a third person. This suggests that strong reciprocity is a powerful device for the enforcement of social norms like, e.g., food-sharing norms or collective action norms. Strong Reciprocity cannot be rationalized as an adaptive trait by the leading evolutionary theories of human cooperation, i.e., by kin selection theory, reciprocal altruism theory, indirect reciprocity theory and costly signaling theory. However, multi-level selection theories and theories of cultural evolution are consistent with strong reciprocity.Strong Reciprocity, Punishment, Evolution, Human Cooperation, Social Norms

Noncooperative Support of Public Norm Enforcement in Large Societies

In small groups norm enforcement is provided by mutual punishment and reward. In large societies we have enforcement institutions. This paper shows how such institutions can emerge as a decentralized equilibrium. In a first stage, individuals invest in a public enforcement technology. This technology generates a sanctioning system whose effectiveness depends on the aggregate amount of invested resources. In a second stage, in which individuals contribute to the provision of a public good, the sanctioning system imposes penalties and rewards on deviations from the endogenous norm contribution. It is shown that even if group size goes to infinity public norm enforcement is supported in a noncooperative equilibrium. Psychological factors are not necessary but can be favorable for the emergence of effective public norm enforcement.norm enforcement, public goods, institutions, sanctioning

Self-Commitment-Institutions and Cooperation in Overlapping Generations Games

This paper focuses on a two-period OLG economy with public imperfect observability over the intergenerational cooperative dimension. Individual endowment is at free disposal and perfectly observable. In this environment we study how a new mechanism, we call Self-Commitment-Institution (SCI), outperforms personal and community enforcement in achieving higher ex-ante e¢ ciency. Social norms with and without SCI are characterized. If social norms with SCI are implemented, agents might freely dispose of their endowment. As long as they reduce their marginal gain from deviation in terms of current utility, they also credibly self-commit on intergenerational cooperation. Under quite general conditions we .nd that, even if individual strategies are still characterized by behavioral uncertainty, the introduction of SCI relaxes the inclination toward opportunistic behavior and sustains higher e¢ ciency compared to social norms without SCI. We quantify the value of SCI and investigate the role of memory with di¤erent social norms. Finally, applications on intergenerational public good games and transfer games with productive SCI are providedCooperation; Free disposal; Imperfect public monitoring; Memory; Overlapping generation game; Self-Commitment Institution;