title: Human behaviour: Egalitarian motive and altruistic punishment.
abstract: Altruistic punishment is a behaviour in which individuals punish others at a cost to themselves in order to provide a public good. Fehr and Gächter present experimental evidence in humans indicating that negative emotions towards non-cooperators motivate punishment, which, in turn, provokes a high degree of cooperation. Using Fehr and Gächter's original data, we provide an alternative analysis of their experiment that suggests that egalitarian motives are more important than motives for punishing non-cooperative behaviour. This finding is consistent with evidence that humans may have an evolutionary incentive to punish the highest earners in order to promote equality, rather than cooperation.
authors.affiliation: Department of Political Science, University of California, Davis, One Shields Avenue, Davis, California 95616, USA. jhfowler@ucdavis.edu
authors.forename: James H
authors.initials: JH
authors.lastname: Fowler
authors.forename: Tim
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Johnson
authors.forename: Oleg
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Smirnov
mesh_terms: D000533:Altruism; D005075:Biological Evolution; D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D003469:Culture; D004467:Economics; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology; D005716:Game Theory; D006801:Humans; D008960:Models, Psychological; D009042:Motivation; D011678:Punishment / Q000523:psychology*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012935:Social Justice / Q000191:economics / Q000523:psychology*