Norm violations and punishments across human societies

Abstract

Punishments for norm violations are hypothesized to be a crucial component of the maintenance of cooperation in humans but little is known about cross-cultural variation in their use. We investigated the degree to which punishment systems were correlated with socioecology and cultural history. We took data from the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample database and also coded ethnographic documents from a sample of 131 largely nonindustrial societies. We recorded whether punishment for norm violations concerned adultery, religion, food, rape, or war cowardice, and whether sanctions were reputational, physical, material or execution. We used Bayesian phylogenetic regression modeling to test for culture-level covariation. We found little evidence of phylogenetic signals in evidence for punishment types, suggesting punishment systems change relatively quickly over cultural evolutionary history. We found evidence that reputational punishment was associated with egalitarianism and the absence of food storage; material punishment was associated with the presence of food storage; physical punishment was moderately associated with greater dependence on hunting; and execution punishment was moderately associated with social stratification. We interpret results within a cultural ecological framework and emphasize the importance of socioecological context for understanding diversity in human punishment systems.

Norm violations and punishments across human societies

“…Research transparency and reproducibility. The data that support the findings of this study are openly available via the violationsandpunishments R data package (Garfield et al, 2023) which is available at Zenodo (https://zenodo.org/record/ 7736277) and also available via GitHub (https://github.com/zhgarfield/violationsandpunishmentsdata). Additional information, including ethnographic sources, metadata and additional details on these sources, the sample and the coding procedures are available in the SI repository hosted via the Open Science Foundation (https://osf.io/9kjy5/).…”

“…Ethnographic sources including metadata and additional details on these sources, our sample, and coding procedures are available in the SI repository (https://osf.io/9kjy5/). Data are available via the violationsandpunishments R data package (Garfield et al, 2023).…”

Cross-societal variation in norm enforcement systems

“…[45]59 diverse societiesn.a.n.a. X Xsubsistence type, region, group context, leader genderGarfield et al . [37]131 diverse societiesn.a.n.a. X Xanimal husbandry, community size, dependence on hunting, food storage, external trade, social stratificationHenrich et al . [31]15 diverse societiesX X Xsubsistence typeHenrich et al .…”

Author's response: The challenge of peace

“…I agree with Huang that immaterial sanctions, including reputational damage and social rejection can be very effective at enforcing social norms, and in some cases perhaps more effective than physical sanctions. Further, reputational sanctions appear more common in hunter–gatherers than material or physical sanctions (Garfield et al, 2023). My argument about the importance of stronger sanctions is based on ethnographic observation but is not intended to imply that reputation is not important, only that it often appears insufficient.…”