Proximate Mechanisms Underlying Moral Punishment

Transcription

1 International Conference on Social Dilemmas Zürich Proximate Mechanisms Underlying Moral Punishment Christine Clavien University of Lausanne

2 Social norms are key to human cooperative interactions gossip / reputation systems of beliefs Various ways to enforce social norms Punishment praise & reward

3 It is not yet clear what proximate mechanisms underlie people s drive to enforce moral norms (via punishment or reward) Are we motivated to enforce moral norms only in situations where we have something to gain from it? Do we also have something like a motivating moral sense?

4 Third-party situations Experimental economics results (trust game, dictator game, etc.) human willingness to punish social norm violators even when no expectation of future cooperation (Fehr & Fischbacher 2004; Carpenter & Matthews 2005) and even under anonymous conditions no expectation of reputation (Lewisch, Ottone & Ponzano, forthcoming; Kurzban, DeScioli & O'Brien 2007) some evidence for third-party rewarding of generous actions (Sutter, Haiger & Koche 2010)

5 At first glance, these experimental results indicate that humans have a universal psychological disposition to punish norm violators and possibly to reward norm abiding individuals a pure aversion to social betrayal which is triggered when somebody reveals an anti-social intention by violating a group-beneficial norm (Fehr & Camerer 2007) some sort of motivating moral sense (Hutcheson 1725) or moral mechanism (Sripada & Stich 2006) Just dessert theory in social psychology (Carlsmith, Darley, & Robinson, 2002)

6 However, current research on third-party punishment / reward remains difficult to evaluate it is mainly conducted in artificial test conditions where subjects know that they are being tested many unwanted confounding factors may impact on participants decisions research in anthropology and sociology cast doubt on the idea that, in the real world, people are willing to sanction others social norm violations if there is no social pressure or personal interest at stake (F. Guala 2012)

7 Michel Chapuisat Uni Lausanne Colby Tanner Uni Lausanne Fabrice Clément Uni Neuchâtel We challenged the idea of universal aversion to social betrayal which predicts that a significant proportion of any sufficiently large group of humans will punish violations of local norms

8 Real-life, anonymous, third-party study The experiment is about deciding to vote anonymously for (or against) the best candidate of a violin competition, although she is morally contemptible We tested participants from the same culture but from different socioprofessional categories If third-party moral punishment is not universally applied despite shared moral evaluation, it becomes difficult to assume that humans have a pure aversion to social betrayal

9 Methods We simulated the final phase of a violin competition in which participants were asked to intervene as music judges Participants had to vote for one of two violin finalists that differed in musical ability and social conduct Participants believed that the winner violinist is awarded a record deal (important career advancement)

10 most talented violinist less talented violinist Control treatment = nice = morally disrespectful (harming behaviour) = nice = nice mistunes fellow students' instruments & mixes their musical scores before concerts + group disturbing behaviour In voting against the immoral violinist, participants could diminish her career opportunities => moral punishment Punishment had no impact on participants lives (the wrongdoer was not expected to be encountered in the future) provided no reputation because it was done anonymously implied no cost for the punisher

11 impact of moral information proportions of votes for the most talented violinist when subjects received neutral information versus moral information ** = p < 0.01, n.s. = p > 0.05

12 Main result The observed variation among socio-professional categories (only teachers punished) challenges the broad assumption of a simple universal punishing mechanism New questions Why did we find such a low level of punishment? Familiarity hypothesis The wrongdoing (disrespectful student in a school context) was more familiar to teachers than to the two other categories Prediction: punishment could be triggered in another category if the wrongdoing is more familiar for this category Reward hypothesis When we believe that the punishment has a real impact on a person s life, it is more difficult to find the motivation to punish Prediction: it should be easier to observe motivation to enforce moral norms via rewarding actions than punishing actions

13 Michel Chapuisat Danielle Mersch Gregoire Pasquier Uni Lausanne Follow up study Control Drug selling Angel Total Police High School Teachers

14 N=146 N=74 p = 0.03 Proportions of votes for the less talented violinist

15 Intermediate conclusions On motivation to punish immoral behaviour: - we have replicated our first results with a different kinds of moral transgression (selling drug) - No significant effect of the immoral action on voting behaviour (Police & High School) - This is the case even when the moral transgression is more familiar to the Police category On motivation to reward moral behaviour Familiarity hypothesis - we found no positive effect of the hyper-moral action on voting behavior (the police category even punished the virtuous violinist) Reward hypothesis

16 Thanks! Michel Chapuisat Uni Lausanne Danielle Mersch Uni Lausanne Fondation 450ème Gregroire Pasquier (Ms student Uni Lausanne)