Titel
Altruistic Punishment: The Golden Keystone of Human Cooperation and Social Stability?
Abstract
‘Altruistic punishment’ (i.e., costly punishment that serves no instrumental goal for the punisher) could serve, as suggested by the pertinent experimental literature, as a powerful enforcer of social norms. This paper discusses foundations, extensions, and, in particular, limits and open questions of this concept—and it does so mostly based on experimental evidence provided by the author. Inter alia, the paper relates the (standard) literature on negative emotions as a trigger of second party punishment to more recent experimental findings on the phenomenon of ‘spontaneous cooperation’ and ‘spontaneous punishment’ and demonstrates its (tight) emotional basis. Furthermore, the paper discusses the potential for free riding on altruistic punishment. While providing valuable insights into the understanding of social order, ‘altruistic punishment’ is thus not the golden keystone of social stability.
Stichwort
public good gamesaltruistic punishmentintrinsic disutility of punishmentspontaneous punishment effectreview of punishment decisions
Objekt-Typ
Sprache
Englisch [eng]
Erschienen in
Titel
Analyse & Kritik
Band
42
Ausgabe
2
ISSN
2365-9858
Erscheinungsdatum
2020
Seitenanfang
255
Seitenende
284
Publication
Walter de Gruyter GmbH
Erscheinungsdatum
2020
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