IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0171298.html

Human punishment is not primarily motivated by inequality

Author

Listed:
  • Jesse Marczyk

Abstract

Previous theorizing about punishment has suggested that humans desire to punish inequality per se. However, the research supporting such an interpretation contains important methodological confounds. The main objective of the current experiment was to remove those confounds in order to test whether generating inequality per se is punished. Participants were recruited from an online market to take part in a wealth-alteration game with an ostensible second player. The participants were given an option to deduct from the other player’s payment as punishment for their behavior during the game. The results suggest that human punishment does not appear to be motivated by inequality per se, as inequality that was generated without inflicting costs on others was not reliably punished. Instead, punishment seems to respond primarily to the infliction of costs, with inequality only becoming relevant as a secondary input for punishment decisions. The theoretical significance of this finding is discussed in the context of its possible adaptive value.

Suggested Citation

  • Jesse Marczyk, 2017. "Human punishment is not primarily motivated by inequality," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(2), pages 1-11, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0171298
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0171298
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0171298
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0171298&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0171298?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Falk, Armin & Fehr, Ernst & Fischbacher, Urs, 2008. "Testing theories of fairness--Intentions matter," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 62(1), pages 287-303, January.
    2. Christopher T. Dawes & James H. Fowler & Tim Johnson & Richard McElreath & Oleg Smirnov, 2007. "Egalitarian motives in humans," Nature, Nature, vol. 446(7137), pages 794-796, April.
    3. Houser, Daniel & Xiao, Erte, 2010. "Inequality-seeking punishment," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 109(1), pages 20-23, October.
    4. Ernst Fehr & Klaus M. Schmidt, 1999. "A Theory of Fairness, Competition, and Cooperation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(3), pages 817-868.
    5. P. R. Blake & K. McAuliffe & J. Corbit & T. C. Callaghan & O. Barry & A. Bowie & L. Kleutsch & K. L. Kramer & E. Ross & H. Vongsachang & R. Wrangham & F. Warneken, 2015. "The ontogeny of fairness in seven societies," Nature, Nature, vol. 528(7581), pages 258-261, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ding, Rui & Wang, Xianjia & Zhao, Jinhua & Gu, Cuiling, 2025. "Effects of punishment driven by inequity aversion on promoting cooperation in public goods games," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 190(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Christian Thöni, 2014. "Inequality aversion and antisocial punishment," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 76(4), pages 529-545, April.
    2. Leibbrandt, Andreas & López-Pérez, Raúl, 2011. "Individual Heterogeneity in Punishment and Reward," Working Papers in Economic Theory 2011/01, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain), Department of Economic Analysis (Economic Theory and Economic History).
    3. Fehr, Ernst & Schmidt, Klaus M., 2010. "On inequity aversion: A reply to Binmore and Shaked," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 73(1), pages 101-108, January.
    4. Leibbrandt, Andreas & López-Pérez, Raúl & Spiegelman, Eli, 2023. "Reciprocal, but inequality averse as well? Mixed motives for punishment and reward," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 210(C), pages 91-116.
    5. Andreas Leibbrandt & Raúl López-Pérez, 2014. "Different carrots and different sticks: do we reward and punish differently than we approve and disapprove?," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 76(1), pages 95-118, January.
    6. Katherine McAuliffe & Natalie Benjamin & Felix Warneken, 2022. "Reward type influences adults’ rejections of inequality in a task designed for children," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(8), pages 1-20, August.
    7. Xiao, Erte & Bicchieri, Cristina, 2010. "When equality trumps reciprocity," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 456-470, June.
    8. Daniel Schunk & Isabell Zipperle, 2023. "Fairness and inequality acceptance in children and adolescents: A survey on behaviors in economic experiments," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(5), pages 1715-1742, December.
    9. Goeschl, Timo & Jarke, Johannes, 2013. "Second vs. Third Party Punishment under Costly Monitoringː A New Experimental Method and Evidence," WiSo-HH Working Paper Series 6, University of Hamburg, Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences, WISO Research Laboratory.
    10. Houser, Daniel & Xiao, Erte, 2010. "Inequality-seeking punishment," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 109(1), pages 20-23, October.
    11. Rodriguez-lara, Ismael, 2015. "Equal distribution or equal payoffs? Reciprocity and inequality aversion in the investment game," MPRA Paper 63313, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Fehr, Dietmar, 2018. "Is increasing inequality harmful? Experimental evidence," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 123-134.
    13. Bing Bai & Hengchen Dai & Dennis J. Zhang & Fuqiang Zhang & Haoyuan Hu, 2022. "The Impacts of Algorithmic Work Assignment on Fairness Perceptions and Productivity: Evidence from Field Experiments," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 24(6), pages 3060-3078, November.
    14. Minh T. Le & Alejandro Saporiti & Yizhi Wang, 2021. "Distributive politics with other‐regarding preferences," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 23(2), pages 203-227, April.
    15. Frans van Winden & Mirre Stallen & K. Richard Ridderinkhof, 2008. "On the Nature, Modeling, and Neural Bases of Social Ties," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 08-063/1, Tinbergen Institute.
    16. Christian Thoeni & Simon Gaechter, 2011. "Peer Effects and Social Preferences in Voluntary Cooperation," Discussion Papers 2011-09, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.
    17. Johannes Weisser, 2012. "Leading by Words in Privileged Groups," Jena Economics Research Papers 2011-066, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena.
    18. Hiroki Ozono & Yoshio Kamijo & Kazumi Shimizu, 2016. "Institutionalize Reciprocity to Overcome the Public Goods Provision Problem," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(6), pages 1-11, June.
    19. Cassandra R. Chambers & Wayne E. Baker, 2020. "Robust Systems of Cooperation in the Presence of Rankings: How Displaying Prosocial Contributions Can Offset the Disruptive Effects of Performance Rankings," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 31(2), pages 287-307, March.
    20. Bruno S. Frey & Stephan Meier, "undated". "Pro-Social Behavior, Reciprocity or Both?," IEW - Working Papers 107, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0171298. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.