Synonyms
Definition
The payoff or fitness reduction resulting from the punishment of norm violators.
Introduction
The willingness to punish selfish behavior is believed to play a key role in promoting cooperation in daily life. This entry provides an overview of what is known about the costs of punishing: why they matter, what they imply for cooperation, and what they comprise of. The focus here will be on informal punishment, i.e., peer-to-peer punishment, a topic of intense investigation in the past decade. The case of formal or institutional punishment is not considered here. As it turns out, we know a fair amount about why the costs of punishment matter and what they imply for cooperation, but relatively little about what they comprise of.
Costs of Punishing
At the most fundamental level, the costs of punishing can be divided into two categories: those incurred by punishers and those incurred by the targets. Theoretical models and laboratory...
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References
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Nikiforakis, N. (2021). Costs of Punishing. In: Shackelford, T.K., Weekes-Shackelford, V.A. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19650-3_1621
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19650-3_1621
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