Effects of Gender on Costly Punishment

Time pressure and deliberation affect moral punishment

The deliberate-morality account implies that moral punishment should be decreased with time pressure and increased with deliberation while the intuitive-morality account predicts the opposite. In three experiments, moral punishment was examined in a simultaneous one-shot Prisoner's Dilemma game with a costly punishment option. The players cooperated or defected and then decided whether or not to punish their partners. In Experiment 1, the punishment decisions were made without or with time pressure. In Experiment 2, the punishment decisions were immediate or delayed by pauses in which participants deliberated their decisions. In Experiment 3, participants were asked to deliberate self-interest or fairness before deciding whether to punish their partners. Different types of punishment were distinguished using the cooperation-and-punishment model. In Experiment 1, time pressure decreased moral punishment. In Experiment 2, deliberation increased moral punishment. So far, the evidence supports the deliberate-morality account. Experiment 3 demonstrates that the effect of deliberation depends on what is deliberated. When participants deliberated self-interest rather than fairness, moral punishment was decreased. The results suggest that unguided deliberation increases moral punishment, but the effects of deliberation are modulated by the type of deliberation that takes place. These results strengthen a process-based account of punishment which offers a more nuanced understanding of the context-specific effect of deliberation on moral punishment than the deliberate-morality account.

People punish defection, not failures to conform to the majority

Do people punish others for defecting or for failing to conform to the majority? In two experiments, we manipulated whether the participants' partners cooperated or defected in the majority of the trials of a Prisoner's Dilemma game. The effects of this base-rate manipulation on cooperation and punishment were assessed using a multinomial processing tree model. High compared to low cooperation rates of the partners increased participants' cooperation. When participants' cooperation was not enforced through partner punishment, the participants' cooperation was closely aligned to the cooperation rates of the partners. Moral punishment of defection increased when cooperation rates were high compared to when defection rates were high. However, antisocial punishment of cooperation when defection rates were high was much less likely than moral punishment of defection when cooperation rates were high. In addition, antisocial punishment was increased when cooperation rates were high compared to when defection rates were high. The latter two results contradict the assumption that people punish conformity-violating behavior regardless of whether the behavior supports or disrupts cooperation. Punishment is thus sensitive to the rates of cooperation and defection but, overall, the results are inconsistent with the idea that punishment primarily, let alone exclusively, serves to enforce conformity with the majority.

Communicating emotions, but not expressing them privately, reduces moral punishment in a Prisoner's Dilemma game

The existence of moral punishment, that is, the fact that cooperative people sacrifice resources to punish defecting partners requires an explanation. Potential explanations are that people punish defecting partners to privately express or to communicate their negative emotions in response to the experienced unfairness. If so, then providing participants with alternative ways to privately express or to communicate their emotions should reduce moral punishment. In two experiments, participants interacted with cooperating and defecting partners in a Prisoner's Dilemma game. After each round, participants communicated their emotions to their partners (Experiments 1 and 2) or only expressed them privately (Experiment 2). Each trial concluded with a costly punishment option. Compared to a no-expression control group, moral punishment was reduced when emotions were communicated to the defecting partner but not when emotions were privately expressed. Moral punishment may thus serve to communicate emotions to defecting partners. However, moral punishment was only reduced but far from being eliminated, suggesting that the communication of emotions does not come close to replacing moral punishment. Furthermore, prompting participants to focus on their emotions had undesirable side-effects: Privately expressing emotions diminished cooperation, enhanced hypocritical punishment (i.e., punishment of defecting partners by defecting participants), and induced an unspecific bias to punish the partners irrespective of their actions.

Enhanced source memory for cheaters with higher resemblance to own-culture typical faces

Recent evidence suggests that culture-specific face typicality has an impact on making trait judgments. Additionally, facial resemblance to one's culture-typical faces causes them to be perceived as reliable, less dangerous, and more accurately recognized. When judging persons from other cultural origins, one's own culture's face standards might shape inferences, behavior, and memory. In this study, the partners' facial resemblance to participants' culturally typical faces was manipulated using target faces, considered to be higher or lower, similar to people living in the participants' hometown. Participants were asked to invest in a company together with partners who have a higher and lower resemblance to their own-culture typical faces in a cooperation game. The results showed that facial resemblance to own-culture typical faces affected investment preferences. Partners with a higher resemblance to own-culture typical faces were more correctly distinguished in the old-new recognition memory task. The study found that partners with a higher resemblance to own-culture typical faces had a source memory advantage for cheating behaviors. These results confirmed that a higher resemblance to own-culture typical faces provide an advantage in cross-cultural interactions, allowing them to become better recognized. Additionally, enhanced source memory for cheaters with higher resemblance to own-culture typical faces may indicate a flexible cognitive system that is sensitive to information that violates social expectations.

Cognitive load decreases cooperation and moral punishment in a Prisoner's Dilemma game with punishment option

The present study serves to test whether cooperation and moral punishment are affected by cognitive load. Dual-process theories postulate that moral behavior is intuitive which leads to the prediction that cooperation and moral punishment should remain unaffected or may even increase when cognitive load is induced by a secondary task. However, it has also been proposed that cognitive control and deliberation are necessary to choose an economically costly but morally justified option. A third perspective implies that the effects of cognitive load may depend on the specific processes involved in social dilemmas. In the present study, participants played a simultaneous Prisoner’s Dilemma game with a punishment option. First, both players decided to cooperate or defect. Then they had the opportunity to punish the partners. In the cognitive-load group, cognitive load was induced by a continuous tone classification task while the no-load group had no distractor task. Under cognitive load, cooperation and moral punishment decreased in comparison to the no-load condition. By contrast, hypocritical and antisocial punishment were not influenced by the dual-task manipulation. Increased cognitive load was associated with a bias to punish the partners irrespective of the outcome of the Prisoner’s Dilemma game, suggesting that punishment was applied less purposefully in the cognitive-load condition. The present findings are thus in line with the idea that the availability of cognitive resources does not always have a suppressive effect on moral behaviors, but can have facilitating effects on cooperation and moral punishment.

Resident interactions when affirming and correcting peers in a therapeutic community for women

Purpose –

While recent years have seen a number of studies of social networks in therapeutic communities (TCs) and other residential settings, these have primarily focused on male residents. This paper aims to conduct a longitudinal social network analysis of interpersonal interactions in a TC for women.

Design/methodology/approach –

The data consists of a longitudinal directed social network of instances of feedback between 56 residents of a 16 bed TC for women over a period of 611 days. Mean age of the participants was 33.1 years, mean length of stay was 133.9 days and 91% of the participants were female. Feedback consisted of written affirmations for prosocial behavior and written corrections for contravening TC norms. Data was analyzed using a latent factor longitudinal social network model.

Findings –

Residents react to peer intervention in complex ways. Residents reciprocated affirmations (B = 0.14, 95% confidence interval = 0.10, 0.18) and corrections (B = 0.20, 95% CI = 0.13, 0.25). Controlling for reciprocity, participants who received affirmations were more likely to affirm and correct peers (B = 0.10, 95% CI = 0.06, 0.15; B = 0.17, 95% CI = 0.10, 0.23), suggesting that the encouragement offered by affirmations leads to increased activity. Homophily by admission time occurred in both affirmations and corrections (B = 0.23, 95% CI = 0.10, 0.37; B = 0.51, 95% CI = 0.29, 0.74).

Originality/value –

While affirmations and corrections serve as vehicles for behavioral reinforcement and social learning, they also allow residents to interact in ways that strengthen social bonds.

Moral labels increase cooperation and costly punishment in a Prisoner's Dilemma game with punishment option

To determine the role of moral norms in cooperation and punishment, we examined the effects of a moral-framing manipulation in a Prisoner’s Dilemma game with a costly punishment option. In each round of the game, participants decided whether to cooperate or to defect. The Prisoner’s Dilemma game was identical for all participants with the exception that the behavioral options were paired with moral labels (“I cooperate” and “I cheat”) in the moral-framing condition and with neutral labels (“A” and “B”) in the neutral-framing condition. After each round of the Prisoner’s Dilemma game, participants had the opportunity to invest some of their money to punish their partners. In two experiments, moral framing increased moral and hypocritical punishment: participants were more likely to punish partners for defection when moral labels were used than when neutral labels were used. When the participants’ cooperation was enforced by their partners’ moral punishment, moral framing did not only increase moral and hypocritical punishment but also cooperation. The results suggest that moral framing activates a cooperative norm that specifically increases moral and hypocritical punishment. Furthermore, the experience of moral punishment by the partners may increase the importance of social norms for cooperation, which may explain why moral framing effects on cooperation were found only when participants were subject to moral punishment.

Difference in Response to Feedback and Gender in Three Therapeutic Community Units

Therapeutic communities (TCs) for substance abuse incorporate a system of peer feedback through written affirmations and corrections. Previous research has found that TC residents show a response to affirmations that is detectable for roughly 8 weeks, with response to corrections being of shorter duration and weaker overall. It is not clear whether and to what extent response to feedback in TCs varies between men and women. Previous research in other settings suggests that women should be more responsive to feedback than men. In order to test this hypothesis we draw on a large dataset of affirmations and corrections sent and received in three 80 bed TC units, two of which house men and one of which houses women. The analysis uses a multilevel negative binomial model, treating affirmations and corrections that TC residents receive as predictors of affirmations that they send over a 9 week period (week 0, the week during which affirmations and corrections are actually sent, and eight subsequent weeks). The model controls for gender, age, race, unit and scores on the Level of Service Inventory-Revised (LSI-R). The relationship between affirmations received and those sent is stronger for women during the initial week and on lags 1-2 and 5-8. The relationship between corrections received and affirmations sent is stronger for women on lags 2 and 8. Graphs suggest that response to affirmations falls off in an exponential curve, while that to corrections appears to include a periodic element. These results indicate that both men and women respond to feedback, but that the strength of the women's response is somewhat greater. These results suggest that any difference in suitability by gender to the feedback approach that characterizes TCs may favor women.

Does Gender Matter in the Relationship between Anxiety and Decision-Making?

There is an ongoing debate about whether and how anxiety level affects behavioral performance in risk and/or ambiguous decision-making. According to the literature, we suggest that gender difference might be a confounding factor that has contributed to heterogeneous findings in previous studies. To examine this idea, 135 students who participated in this study were divided into six groups according to their gender (male/female) and trait anxiety level (high/medium/low; measured by the Trait form of Spielberger's State-Trait Anxiety Inventory). All groups finished the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) for ambiguous decision-making, and the Game of Dice Task (GDT) for risk decision-making. Behavioral results revealed that the IGT but not the GDT showed an interaction between anxiety and gender. Specifically, men outperformed women in the IGT, but only when their trait anxiety levels were low. Meanwhile, the GDT showed a main effect of anxiety grouping, such that low anxious participants were more risk-seeking than their medium anxious counterparts. These findings indicate that gender selectively modulates the influence of anxiety on ambiguous decision-making, but not risk decision-making. The theoretical and practical implications of the current findings are discussed.