Antisocial punishment is driven by low contributors’ sense of unfair treatment.

Evidence

Herrmann et al.’s extensive study supports this interpretation. First, they observe, it is in groups where contributions are low that participants punish high contributors: The lower the mean contributions in a pool, the higher the level of antisocial punishment. Second, the participants who punish high contributors are those who gave small amounts in the first rounds, indicating thereby that they had low standards of cooperation from the start. Third, Herrmann et al. found that antisocial punishment increases as a function of the amount of punishment received, suggesting that, in such cases, it was indeed a reaction to what was felt to have been an unfair punishment for a low but fair contribution. That they saw their low contribution as nevertheless fair and hence unfairly punished is evidenced by the fact that antisocial punishers did not increase their own level of contribution when they were punished for it. All these observations support an interpretation of antisocial punishment as guided by considerations of fairness (however misguided they may be). — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality, 192

Categorization

• XREF: Connects directly to the reader’s analytical frame about how authority figures and their enforcers destroy partner choice — here the very mechanism by which low contributors retaliate against moralizers who demand too much. — connects to: Punishing high contributors can erase the cooperative benefits of punishment. — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality: The…, 190; Third-party punishment scales with how far selfish transfers fall short of fairness norms. — Ernst Fehr, Third-Party Punishment and Social Norms, 30; Punishment functions as negative redistribution to correct prior unfair gains — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality: The…, 175

Related

• Punishing high contributors can erase the cooperative benefits of punishment. (similarity 0.86)
• Punishment scales with the unfairness of the wrongdoing, not with deterrence needs (similarity 0.82)
• Third-party punishment scales with how far selfish transfers fall short of fairness norms. (similarity 0.81)
• People punish free-riders partly to correct inequality, not only to enforce cooperation. (similarity 0.80)
• Harsh antisocial punishment is culturally correlated with weak civic norms. (similarity 0.80)
• People spend their own money to punish and reward strangers with no future benefit. (similarity 0.80)
• Contributions carry implicit fairness judgments that trigger blame and counter-blame. (similarity 0.80)
• Impartial third parties punish norm violators at personal cost. (similarity 0.80)
• Third-party punishment context reduces the number of punishers who sanction selfish transfers. (similarity 0.80)
• Third parties punish inequality even when it does not directly involve them. (similarity 0.79)
• A punisher’s own gains do not reduce punishment of unrelated violators. (similarity 0.79)
• Punishment functions as negative redistribution to correct prior unfair gains (similarity 0.79)
• Third-party punishment is weaker than second-party punishment. (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Punishment functions as negative redistribution to correct prior unfair gains #expands (0.80) — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality, 175
• Third-party punishment scales with how far selfish transfers fall short of fairness norms. #corroborates (0.75) — Ernst Fehr, Third-Party Punishment and Social Norms, 30