Social norms and cultural diversity in the development of third-party punishment

Abstract

Human cooperation is probably supported by our tendency to punish selfishness in others. Social norms play an important role in motivating third-party punishment (TPP), and also in explaining societal differences in prosocial behaviour. However, there has been little work directly linking social norms to the development of TPP across societies. In this study, we explored the impact of normative information on the development of TPP in 603 children aged 4–14, across six diverse societies. Children began to perform TPP during middle childhood, and the developmental trajectories of this behaviour were similar across societies. We also found that social norms began to influence the likelihood of performing TPP during middle childhood in some of these societies. Norms specifying the punishment of selfishness were generally more influential than norms specifying the punishment of prosocial behaviour. These findings support the view that TPP of selfishness is important in all societies, and its development is shaped by a shared psychology for responding to normative information. Yet, the results also highlight the important role that children's prior knowledge of local norms may play in explaining societal variation in the development of both TPP and prosociality.

Cross-cultural, developmental psychology: integrating approaches and key insights

“…To examine whether these patterns held true within populations, we next conducted an assessment of risk and time preferences between Shuar children in more and less-integrated communities, and found the same pattern of results: Shuar children in peri-urban communities were more risk-tolerant and future-oriented than their counterparts in the remote, rainforest communities (Amir, Jordan, et al, 2019) . This form of work, in which initial waves of data generate novel predictions to be tested in subsequent waves -also demonstrated nicely in (House et al, 2013(House et al, , 2019(House et al, , 2020 -represent ways in which multiple key insights can be integrated into a unified research question.…”

“…While the House et al (2013) study provides a compelling example of why a multi-site approach is useful and how it can inform theories of cross-cultural development, additional work by members of the same research team demonstrates how experimental approaches can build upon and enrich these findings. Recently, the team built upon their previous work by using a similar paradigm to explore how cross-societal variation in norms and an emerging norm psychology interact to influence children's social behaviors, such as generosity (House et al, 2019) and third-party punishment (House et al, 2020) . Critically, these studies involved an experimental manipulation: the authors showed children videos of an adult demonstrating a novel normmodeling, for instance, either selfish or generous behavior (House et al, 2019) -to explore how sensitivity to normative behavior shapes children's decision-making in these settings.…”

“…In their work on third-party punishment, the authors find broadly similar patterns, such that the trajectories of children's punishment behavior suggest a shared, underlying psychology for responding to normative behavior. However, in the case of third-party punishment, it appears that children's previous knowledge of locally normative behavior may be in tension with novel norm information in influencing their decisions (House et al, 2020). These data -and these types of investigations in general -are particularly important for evolutionary, developmental science as they can help us better understand what features of early psychology are shared across societies (e.g.…”

Efeito do sistema de economias de fichas sobre o comportamento cooperativo em crianças

“…Pesqui. | Juiz de Fora | 14(4) | 196-220 | 2020DOI: 10.34019/1982-1247.2020 Naegeli supostamente reforçados positivamente pela possibilidade de obtenção de retorno futuro (Ferreira, 2018).…”

“…Pesqui. | Juiz de Fora | 14(4) | 196-220 | 2020DOI: 10.34019/1982-1247.2020 psicóticos quando havia uma demora longa entre o comportamento e o reforço (Ayllon & Azrin, 1965). Nesse caso, a instituição de saúde esperava que os pacientes participassem das rotinas de trabalho, como lavar louça e servir refeições.…”