Punishment in cleaner fish couples may stem from loss aversion, not fairness preferences.

Evidence

Another interesting aspect of the cleaner wrasse mutualism is that cleaners often inspect clients jointly in established malefemale couples, where the two cleaners face an iterated prisoner’s dilemma-like game (Bshary et al. 2008). Couples find a cooperative solution which is based on asymmetric punishment. The larger, dominant males punish females for cheating, whereas females never punish males (Raihani et al. 2010). Although the pattern fits the definition of third-party punishment (the male punishes the female for biting a client), the punishment is obviously self-serving as it promotes future cooperation and males even fine-tune levels of punishment to their losses (Raihani et al. 2012). Intra-specific punishment in cleaner fish serves to restore “fair” outcomes during pairwise cleaning inspections, just as Baumard et al. have suggested that human punishment might. However, male cleaner fish need not attend to females’ payoffs to know when to punish. Instead, they could use client departure and the associated reduction in payoffs (relative to expectations) as a cue to punish cheating females. Thus, punishment may be motivated by loss aversion rather than fairness preferences. — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality, 315

Categorization

• XREF: Directly engages the reading purpose: challenges Baumard’s fairness-preference account of third-party punishment, paralleling Rodrigues/the fumi-e dynamics where punishment restores the perceived contract. — connects to: Seemingly fair outcomes can arise from self-referent loss aversion rather than fairness preferences. — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality: The…, 312; Other-regarding behavior is widespread in animals but fairness preferences are not. — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality: The…, 316; Punishment functions as negative redistribution to correct prior unfair gains — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality: The…, 175 (+1 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: A single naturalistic case that separates fairness accounts from loss-aversion accounts of punishment, with implications for how third-party punishment in human moral systems should be interpreted.

Related

• Other-regarding behavior is widespread in animals but fairness preferences are not. (similarity 0.82)

Broader Connections

• Seemingly fair outcomes can arise from self-referent loss aversion rather than fairness preferences. #corroborates (0.95) — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality, 312
• Other-regarding behavior is widespread in animals but fairness preferences are not. #corroborates (0.85) — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality, 316
• Punishment functions as negative redistribution to correct prior unfair gains #contradicts (0.85) — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality, 175