title: Costly punishment across human societies.
abstract: Recent behavioral experiments aimed at understanding the evolutionary foundations of human cooperation have suggested that a willingness to engage in costly punishment, even in one-shot situations, may be part of human psychology and a key element in understanding our sociality. However, because most experiments have been confined to students in industrialized societies, generalizations of these insights to the species have necessarily been tentative. Here, experimental results from 15 diverse populations show that (i) all populations demonstrate some willingness to administer costly punishment as unequal behavior increases, (ii) the magnitude of this punishment varies substantially across populations, and (iii) costly punishment positively covaries with altruistic behavior across populations. These findings are consistent with models of the gene-culture coevolution of human altruism and further sharpen what any theory of human cooperation needs to explain.
authors.affiliation: Department of Anthropology, Emory University, 1557 Dickey Drive, Atlanta, GA 30322, USA. jhenric@emory.edu
authors.forename: Joseph
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Henrich
authors.forename: Richard
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: McElreath
authors.forename: Abigail
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Barr
authors.forename: Jean
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Ensminger
authors.forename: Clark
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Barrett
authors.forename: Alexander
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Bolyanatz
authors.forename: Juan Camilo
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Cardenas
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Gurven
authors.forename: Edwins
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Gwako
authors.forename: Natalie
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Henrich
authors.forename: Carolyn
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Lesorogol
authors.forename: Frank
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Marlowe
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Tracer
authors.forename: John
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Ziker
mesh_terms: D000349:Africa; D000367:Age Factors; D000533:Altruism; D005075:Biological Evolution; D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D003468:Cultural Evolution; D004522:Educational Status; D005260:Female; D005717:Games, Experimental; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008542:Melanesia; D011678:Punishment; D012044:Regression Analysis; D012737:Sex Factors; D012800:Siberia; D012919:Social Behavior; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D013020:South America; D014481:United States