Exploring the Motivations for Punishment: Framing and Country-Level Effects.

ABSTRACT: Identifying the motives underpinning punishment is crucial for understanding its evolved function. In principle, punishment of distributional inequality could be motivated by the desire to reciprocate losses ('revenge') or by the desire to reduce payoff asymmetries between the punisher and the target ('inequality aversion'). By separating these two possible motivations, recent work suggests that punishment is more likely to be motivated by disadvantageous inequality aversion than by a desire for revenge. Nevertheless, these findings have not consistently replicated across different studies. Here, we suggest that considering country of origin-previously overlooked as a possible source of variation in responses-is important for understanding when and why individuals punish one another. We co

SUBMITTER: Bone JE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4972317 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature