Evolutionary Psychology and Criminal Justice: A Recalibrational Theory of Punishment and Reconciliation

Petersen, Michael Bang; Sell, Aaron; Tooby, John; Cosmides, Leda

doi:10.1007/978-1-137-05001-4_5

Cited by 80 publications

(137 citation statements)

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“…This requires a neurocomputational program that integrates various relevant factors and generates output -for a given decision set-reflecting how much consideration an individual will place on the welfare of that other person. We call the function that does this inputoutput mapping the ''welfare tradeoff function", and call its output the welfare tradeoff ratio (WTR) (Petersen, Sell, Tooby, & Cosmides, 2010;Sell, 2006Sell, , 2011b.…”

Section: The Computational Structure Of the Welfare Tradeoff Functionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The grammar of anger: Mapping the computational architecture of a recalibrational emotion

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a b s t r a c tAccording to the recalibrational theory of anger, anger is a computationally complex cognitive system that evolved to bargain for better treatment. Anger coordinates facial expressions, vocal changes, verbal arguments, the withholding of benefits, the deployment of aggression, and a suite of other cognitive and physiological variables in the service of leveraging bargaining position into better outcomes. The prototypical trigger of anger is an indication that the offender places too little weight on the angry individual's welfare when making decisions, i.e. the offender has too low a welfare tradeoff ratio (WTR) toward the angry individual. Twenty-three experiments in six cultures, including a group of foragers in the Ecuadorian Amazon, tested six predictions about the computational structure of anger derived from the recalibrational theory. Subjects judged that anger would intensify when: (i) the cost was large, (ii) the benefit the offender received from imposing the cost was small, or (iii) the offender imposed the cost despite knowing that the angered individual was the person to be harmed. Additionally, anger-based arguments conformed to a conceptual grammar of anger, such that offenders were inclined to argue that they held a high WTR toward the victim, e.g., ''the cost I imposed on you was small", ''the benefit I gained was large", or ''I didn't know it was you I was harming." These results replicated across all six tested cultures: the US, Australia, Turkey, Romania, India, and Shuar hunter-horticulturalists in Ecuador. Results contradict key predictions about anger based on equity theory and social constructivism.

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Section: The Computational Structure Of the Welfare Tradeoff Functionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The grammar of anger: Mapping the computational architecture of a recalibrational emotion

et al. 2017

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“…2 Haidt (2003) identifies 10 moral emotions separated into four emotion families: (1) the other-condemning emotions: anger, contempt, and disgust; (2) the self-conscious emotions: shame, embarrassment, and guilt; (3) the other-suffering emotions: compassion; and (4) the other-praising emotions: gratitude, awe, and elevation. that this environment selected for certain functional restraints on the activation of anger, because unnecessary aggression would disrupt otherwise valuable relationships (see e.g., Axelrod 1984;de Waal 1996;Petersen et al 2010). Anger is therefore only expected to be triggered in the face of intentional rule violations (Cosmides and Tooby 2005).…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Anger is therefore only expected to be triggered in the face of intentional rule violations (Cosmides and Tooby 2005). Contrastingly, accidental or involuntary violations are believed to activate another moral emotion-compassionwhich facilitates conciliatory responses (Haidt, 2003;Petersen et al 2010). A range of neuroscience studies have provided evidence for this role of intentions in the moral domain by comparing how subjects react to economic outcomes attributable to (1) random decisions by a computer and (2) intentional decisions by another subject (for an overview, see Petersen, Roepstorff, and Serritzlew 2009).…”

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Distinct Emotions, Distinct Domains: Anger, Anxiety and Perceptions of Intentionality

Petersen

2010

The Journal of Politics

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Drawing on recent work in evolutionary psychology, anxiety and anger are argued to be distinct emotions operating in the domains of hazards and morality, respectively. Based on this distinction, it is predicted and demonstrated that the effect of anger on criminal justice opinions (and another moral emotion: compassion) is conditioned by perceptions of the intentions of criminals, while the effect of anxiety is unrelated to these perceptions. These results demonstrate that it is fruitful to distinguish emotions beyond their valence.

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“…The terminology of WTRs is an attempt to describe the psychological machinery that evolved to regulate social decisions (Sell et al 2009;Petersen et al 2010). When social decisions have repercussions for the welfare of others besides the decision-maker, the decision-maker needs to be able to trade-off these repercussions.…”

Section: The Costs and Benefits Of Followershipmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Hence, humans should not only possess psychological mechanisms designed to evaluate and follow leaders that are competent but should also have developed a sophisticated psychology for aligning themselves with leaders that hold high WTRs toward the individual and, hence, refrain from exploitation. 5 The literature distinguishes between intrinsic WTRs guiding behavior when no one else oversees the action (determined by kin or friendship relationships) and monitored WTRs guiding behavior when actions are subjected to supervision by others (determined by these others' abilities and willingness to confer benefits and costs on the self upon detection of the self's action) (see Petersen et al 2010). In the main text of this chapter, we use the term WTR exclusively to refer to monitored WTRs.…”

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The Evolved Functions of Procedural Fairness: An Adaptation for Politics

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Petersen

2016

The Evolution of Morality

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Abstract:Politics is the process of determining resource allocations within and between groups. Group life has constituted a critical and enduring part of human evolutionary history and we should expect the human mind to contain psychological adaptations for dealing with political problems. Previous research has in particular focused on adaptations designed to produce moral evaluations of political outcomes: is the allocation of resources fair? People, however, are not only concerned about outcomes. They also readily produce moral evaluations of the political processes that shape these outcomes. People have a sense of procedural fairness. In this chapter, we identify the adaptive functions of the human psychology of procedural fairness. We argue that intuitions about procedural fairness evolved to deal with adaptive problems related to the delegation of leadership and, specifically, to identify and counter-act exploitative leaders. In the chapter, we first introduce the concept of procedural fairness, review extant social psychological theories and make the case for why an evolutionary approach is needed. Next, we dissect the evolved functions of procedural fairness and review extant research in favor of the evolutionary account. Finally, we discuss how environmental mismatches between ancestral and modern politics make procedural fairness considerations even more potent in modern politics, creating a powerful source of moral outrage.Keywords: procedural fairness, procedural justice, evolutionary psychology, politics, dominance, leadership, strategic moralization 3 Politics is the process of determining resource access (Petersen 2015). In a classical definition, the political scientist, David Easton (1953), thus defined politics as the process of determining the "authoritative allocation of values for a society." In more plain terms, another classical definition described politics as about "who gets what" (Lasswell 1950). These definitions highlight that politics is ultimately about outcomes: who gets a resource and who does not. Some researchers of politics have taken this to imply that outcomes are all people care about in politics. As Ulbig (2002, p. 793) notes, the traditional notion has been that "when people get what they want they do not care how they get it". Popkin (1991, p. 99), for example, holds that people "care about ends not means; they judge government by results and are . . . indifferent about the methods by which the results were obtained". is their strategy for achieving those interests? Research has documented that such a focus is, at least in part, demand driven: people crave information about the process leading to outcomes and the strategic aspects involved (Smith et al. 2007;Trussler & Soroka 2014).This appetite for information about what goes on behind the scenes of political outcomes extends even to the personal lives of politicians: who are they, whom are they personally affiliated with, and do they practice what they preach politically? This latter observation illustrates an importan...

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Evolutionary Psychology and Criminal Justice: A Recalibrational Theory of Punishment and Reconciliation

Cited by 80 publications

References 55 publications

The grammar of anger: Mapping the computational architecture of a recalibrational emotion

The grammar of anger: Mapping the computational architecture of a recalibrational emotion

Distinct Emotions, Distinct Domains: Anger, Anxiety and Perceptions of Intentionality

The Evolved Functions of Procedural Fairness: An Adaptation for Politics

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