Alright, I’m back from eBay Live and my family vacation out to the East Coast to see the in-laws. Got to see the Sox squash the Mets (though not the Pedro game) and eat some H&H bagels, so I think I’ve pretty much satisfied my Yankee urges for the time being.
During my time in New York I had a chance to see Jason Morris, an Assistant Professor at Fordham and friend through my brother in law, Mark Sternman. Jason was kind enough to send me over a copy of an article from the June 23, 2006 edition of Science entitled “Costly Punishment Across Human Societies” (put together by 14 different co-authors) that covers some of the co-evolution topics I’ve addressed previously in this blog.
This article is interesting because it examines 15 diverse populations around the world to determine the willingness of populations to administer punishment as a reaction to unequal behavior. The severity of these punishments vary widely among the populations studied. Also, interestingly enough, the punishment cost appears to be closely tied to the degree of altruism in each population. So, as the article puts it, “societies in which costly punishment is common will exhibit stronger norms of fairness and prosociality,” (p. 1767). Translated into my more primitive understanding, I take this to infer that populations that punish violators of social conventions harshly (such as the American south’s reaction to the anti-Bush comments of the Dixie Chicks) also exhibit more social niceties (hence southern hospitality), while populations that are more freewheeling, tolerant, and less judgmental (New York City, for instance) are less socially supportive among strangers (just see how many people say hello or smile at you in the subway). I think also back to stories I’ve heard about how supportive and kind tight-knit communities can be for those deemed part of the “in-group” (such as small town America, or societies like Japan) but the hostility that those same communities can show to those deemed outside the trusted group (such as those of a different race).
The study underlying the article is revolutionary in that it examines these behaviors in a wider variety of populations than are usually examined. The vast majority of these experiments in the past have been conducted using university students, but this experiment included not only students but residents in rural and urban environments in both developing and developed societies.
The authors make the point that further work must be done to determine the contribution of culture as opposed to genes in the roots of this “altruistic punishment,” and beyond that the role of between-group variation, in the development of an overarching theory of human cooperation.
I find the thought that escalating diversity leads to decreased prosocial behavior both depressing and logical at the same time. Also, all too often the “costly punishment” doled out in the name of enforcing social equality can be asymmetric or even cruel (just ask the Dixie Chicks). But this growing understanding of the evolutionary roots of human cooperation, and potentially even its genetic components, are important contributions to our understanding of how best to sync up conflict resolution with human nature.