COOPERATION, PUNISHMENT AND

PROSOCIALITY

Cooperation and social norm following/enforcement Models of reciprocity

Direct vs. indirect Weak vs. strong (self- vs. other-regarding)

Norm enforcement via Punishment Costly punishment – second vs. third (direct vs. indirect) Roots of justice?

Prosocial mechanisms Empathy, in-group altruism to out-group bias Hormonal influence

OUTLINE

 establish, transmit and enforce social norms. Social norms—widely shared sentiments about what constitutes appropriate behavior—comprise a basic “grammar of social interaction”: sets of prescribed and proscribed rules that serve to foster social peace, stabilize cooperation and enhance prosperity

SOCIAL NORMS

Direct reciprocity (reciprocal altruism) cooperation in bilateral interactions, even when initially

costly, is incentivized owing to the selfish benefits that may be accrued in the long-term

cooperation under direct reciprocity models is only evolutionarily stable in small groups (<10);

empirical data suggests that natural selection wouldn't favor cooperation by reciprocal altruism among unrelated individuals on the scale of human culture5. Theories of indirect reciprocity focus instead on the self-interest that is served by accruing a good reputation through altruistic behavior. 

LIMITS OF DIRECT RECIPROCITY

Weak reciprocity (self-regarding) self-interest that is served by accruing a good reputation

through altruistic behavior. potential of indirect reciprocity for explaining the

emergence, among humans, of cooperation among nonrelatives.

the biological basis of morality; major motivation for language, gossip being a way of

spreading reputations (Dunbar’s Social Brain Hypothesis) The advent of e-commerce provides the other reason why

understanding the assessment of reputations matters: the prevalence of anonymous one-shot interactions in global markets raises the issues of trust building and moral hazard

INDIRECT RECIPROCITY

attach a binary score (“Good” or “Bad”) to each individual in the population.

From time to time, two individuals meet randomly, one as donor, the other as recipient. At some cost c to one's own payoff , the donor can help the recipient, i.e., increase the recipient's payoff by a benefit b>c.

In that case, the donor's score will be Good in the eyes of all observers, whereas the score of a donor refusing to confer the benefit will be Bad.

A discriminating strategy of helping only those with a Good score would channel benefits toward those who help and discourage defectors.

SIMPLE MODEL

A discriminator who refuses to help recipients with a Bad score receives a Bad score and risks getting no help in the next round.

In this sense, punishing defectors by withholding help is costly. Can such a trait evolve? Would it not be advantageous to distinguish justifi able defections (against a Bad recipient) from nonjustifi able defections (against a Good recipient) and attach a Bad score only to the latter?

This would constitute a noncostly form of punishment and would greatly alleviate the discriminator's task. But such a distinction requires considerable cognitive capacities. Not only the recipient's past but also that of the recipient's recipients, etc., must be taken into account.

second-order social dilemma: free-ride on others punishment

COSTLY VS. NONCOSTLY PUNISHMENT

Can reputation account for widespread nature of human cooperation where one-shot (unrepeated) interactions are common and attendant reputational benefits likely to be small?

LIMITATIONS OF INDIRECT RECIPROCITY

 ”Homo reciprocans  cares about the well-being of others and about the processes determining outcomes--whether they are fair, for example, or violate a social norm. He diff ers in this from the self-regarding and outcome-oriented Homo economicus” -Gintis

long-term widespread cooperation is made possible by the presence of “strong reciprocators”: individuals who reward norm-followers (for example, cooperators) and punish norm-violators (for example, defectors) even when such actions are costly, and in the absence of any material future gain for the strong reciprocator

Self-regarding vs. prosocial, other-regarding preferences – altrusitic cooperation and costly punishment - search for biological prosocial processes (e.g., empathy)

capacity to learn norms; integrate predictions about norm-related action outcomes into decision making to guide their own behavior; assess other individuals' beliefs, desires and behavior in the context of these norms; and use subjective responses to norm violations to appropriately sanction defection.

STRONG RECIPROCITY

individuals will accept costs to sanction individuals who have violated fairness and distribution norms even when they were not directly aff ected by the norm violation

“Moralistic punishment in humans is an evolutionary mystery because it is performed by third parties. This raises the key question: Why do people care about interactions among unrelated others? Given that punishment is costly and can potentially draw retaliation, appears to be a tendency that would be selected against, raising the issue of how adaptations that give rise to moralistic punishment evolved.” –Kurzban

Alternative: moralistic punishment is reputation-enhancing (self-regarding)

THIRD PARTY PUNISHMENT

John plans to be a gangster for a Halloween offi ce party. He buys suitable clothing, as well as a small loaded gun. The gun looks like a toy, and John plans to use it to kill a rival, and then claim it was an accident. He later shoots his rival, who dies of the injuries

John has a license to hunt deer with his licensed rifle. One day, he sees a deer, takes aim, and shoots – missing the deer but killing a distant hunter. The deceased hunter had not complied with important state safety regulations. In particular, he was not wearing “hunter orange” to distinguish himself from target animals.

PUNISHMENT 1-9

 cognitive processes involved in determination of responsibility prefrontal activity was linked to a categorical aspect of

legal decision-making (deciding whether or not to punish on the basis of criminal responsibility

Emotional processes involved in magnitude of punishment amygdala, medial prefrontal cortex, and posterior

cingulated cortex) consistently linked to social and emotional processing is associated with the amount of assigned punishment during legal decision-making. 

COGNITIVE & EMOTIONAL COMPONENTS

Capacity to share emotional state of others Key motivator, proximate mechanism for altruistic behavior

whereby an individual perceives and shares in the distress of another person, and acts to reduce his or her suff ering

simulation theories of empathy which suggest that humans understand (i.e., ‘simulate’) others’ emotional states by imagining what they themselves would feel in a similar situation

Even the most advanced forms of empathy in humans are built on more basic forms and remain connected to core mechanisms associated with aff ective communication, social attachment, and parental care. 

Empathy has been shown to vary depending on interindividual diff erences (Chiao et al., 2009; Singer et al., 2004), as well as on subjective judgments of targets made by perceivers (Singer et al., 2006).

PROSOCIALITY: EMPATHY

Caring for others draws on general mammalian neural systems of reward and social attachment. Moreover, empathy is not unique to humans, as many of the biological mechanisms are shared with other mammalian species. However, humans are special in the sense that high-level cognitive abilities, such as executive function, language, and mentalizing, implemented by the prefrontal cortex, are layered on top of phylogenetically older social and emotional capacities. These evolutionarily newer aspects of information processing expand the range of behaviors that can be driven by empathy, and expand flexibility like caring for and helping outgroup members or even individuals from diff erent species.

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E m p a t h y d r a w s o n a l a rg e a r r a y o f n e u ro b i o l o g i c a l s y s t e m s th a t a re n o t l i m i t e d t o t h e c o r t ex ( i n s u l a , a n t e r i o r c i n g u l a t e c o r t ex , a n d o r b i t o f ro n t a l c o r t ex ) , b u t a l s o t h e m i d b r a i n ( e . g . , p e r i a q u e d u c t a l g r a y ) a n d b r a i n s t e m , a n d i n c l u d e s t h e a u t o n o m i c n e r v o u s s y s t e m ( A N S ) , H PA a x i s , a n d e n d o c r i n e s y s t e m s th a t re g u l a te b o d i l y s t a te s , e m o t i o n , a n d re a c t i v i t y.  

THE NEUROEVOLUTION OF EMPATHY

Annals of the New York Academy of SciencesVolume 1231, Issue 1, pages 35-45, 8 JUN 2011 DOI: 10.1111/j.1749-6632.2011.06027.xhttp://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1749-6632.2011.06027.x/full#f2

Does self-other overlap enhances vicarious aff ect sharing during empathy for social pain. We predicted that participants would show activation in the aff ective pain regions when observing a friend (someone with a high-degree of self-other overlap) experience social exclusion, and

MPFC activation

EMPATHY FOR SOCIAL EXCLUSION

Figure 4. Brain Regions Significantly Active in the Interaction Contrast Comparing a Friend’s Exclusion > Inclusion to a Stranger’s Exclusion > Inclusion

Figure 3. Brain Regions during a Friend’s Exclusion Predicted by Self-Other Overlap Scores

Under certain circumstances, people display extraordinary empathy and altruism. One route to enhanced empathy and altruism is through the increased inclusion of another person in the conception of the self (Aron et al., 2004).

Care for one's social ingroup, resulting in ingroup loyalty or ingroup solidarity, may be an example of extraordinary empathy that is brought about by including other group members as part of one's self concept.

EXTRAORDINARY EMPATHY

STIMULUS

(A.) Main eff ect of pain [Pain > No Pain], y = 18. (B., C.) Independent regression analyses [(B.) ACC regression performed on peak voxel: 3, − 9, 45; (C.) right AI regression performed on 39, 12, 5] of [Pain > No Pain] with empathy rating as the covariate. ROIs defined by [Pain > No Pain] contrast.

EMPATHY

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 s ignifi cantly greater activity within MPFC regions in AA relat ive CA part icipants when judging empathy for ingroup relat ive to outgroup targets.

empathy was associated with aff ective neural response with the ACC and bilateral insula, irrespective of social group membership (i.e., race).

African-Americans who experienced greater empathy for ingroup members relative to Caucasian-Americans in pain also showed greater response within the MPFC for ingroup relative to outgroup members in pain.

Additionally, across individuals, activity within the MPFC when perceiving pain expressed by ingroup relative to outgroup members predicted the degree to which people demonstrated an ingroup bias in empathy and altruistic motivation at a behavioral level.

Whereas empathy for humankind is associated with aff ective empathic processing, the current fi ndings demonstrate that extraordinary empathy and altruistic motivation for members of one's own social group is associated with cognitive empathic processing.

EXTRAORDINARY EMPATHY

STEREOTYPES AND MORAL JUDGMENT

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increased activity for sacrifi cing low warmth, low competence to save high warmth, high competence

Specifically, 88% of people say the act is unacceptable when the targets are unidentified (Hauser et al., 2007), indicating most people’s default is moral aversion to the sacrifice. We reverse this pattern by manipulating the warmth and competence of the targets involved: 84% of our respondents say it is acceptable for Joe to push a low-warmth, low-competence person off a bridge to save five high-warmth, high-competence targets.

override their moral aversion to sacrificing low-warmth, low-competence targets or whether they experience less moral aversion to override in the fi rst place.

Prosocial behavior vasopressin (AVP)/oxytocin desire or ‘seeking’,

reward, fear and aggression, affi liation and cooperation, courtship and mating, and parental care.

Social recognitionSocial bondingAssessment of the social environmentSocial memory and learningTemporal discountingPartner choice

HORMONAL BASIS OF SOCIAL BEHAVIO

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POA, preoptic area; Mid, midbrain; VMH, ventromedial hypothalamus; AH, anterior hypothalamus; LS, lateral septum; eMA, extended medial amygdal

HORMONES

HORMONAL INFLUENCES & STATUS GOODS