In my experience, the attitude of antisocial punishers toward do-gooders is something like: “Who does he think he is? Thinks he’s so much better than the rest of us? Showing off how good he is?” (This may not be all of it, but it’s a strong component.)
This may be explained in part by two things:
Altruism is costly signaling for wealth. Contributing to the commons, or even not stealing (or doing other antisocial things), signals that you can afford to do so.
Also, there may be a common sentiment that altruism is only ever intended as signaling (of virtue, of wealth, of whatever), and is thus a status-enhancing move. In my experience, people from such societies will often not comprehend (or be very skeptical of, even when they do comprehend) the idea of acting altruistically for purely… altruistic reasons.
I’m surprised nobody proposed : “This person is promoting a social norm more stringent than my current behavior, I’ll whack him.”. What’s wrong with it ?
Sure in this case the social norm is actually beneficial to the whacker, but we’re adaptation-executers, not fitness-maximizers.
FWIW I first read this post before this comment was written, then happened to think about it again today and had this idea, and came here to post it.
I do think it’s a dangerous fallacy to assume mutually-altruistic equilibria are optimal—‘I take care of me, you take care of you’ is sometimes more efficient than ‘you take care of me, I take care of you’.
Maybe someone needs to study whether Western countries ever exhibit “antisocial cooperation,” that is, an equilibrium of enforced public contributions in an “inefficient public goods game” where each of four players gets 20% of the central pool. Might be more likely if you structure it as tokens starting out in the center and players have the option to take them? (Call it the ‘enclosure game’, perhaps)
I’ll lump two thoughts in here—one relates to SilentCat the other elsewhere but...
Like others I think this is a great insight and should be looked at by the authors, or other interested social scientists. I think it relates to a question I ask myself from time to time, though generally don’t get too far in answering. Where do we draw the line between public and private spheres of action?
I don’t think that is a fixed/static division over time and seems to have important implication for public policy. I’m tempted to say it might with the above proposed efficiency division. I’m not sure though.
The over-all results and some of the other comments also made me wonder if history—particularly as most of these locations seem to have been former USSR members. I’m just wondering if perhaps the culture legacy would support the behavior if innocent people were just as likely to be punished for what might be actions of other attempting to make everyone’s lives better (but often I suspect viewed as a threat to the authorities and government powers).
Nice idea. Maybe all the tokens should start in the pool and the players should have an option to withdraw them. I guess that would make people feel more explicitly “anti-social” if they did so.
I’m from Eastern Europe and have this tendency. I’ve been quite curious about why for example any kind of activism evokes negative emotions and I think at least in my case the answer seems to be what you’re proposing here. The prevalent attitude in society is to free-ride as much as you can and I’m also doing that. To answer the question from the beginning of the post, if we just let other people make cooperation the new norm, then I’ll be expected to cooperate too. I want to keep not caring about society, so I guess the actions of cooperators cash out emotionally as a threat to the status quo that I want to preserve.
Tell me if this gets too personal, but do defectors evoke positive emotions? (Because they lower societal expectations?) Or negative emotions? (i.e. you have a sweet spot of cooperation and dislike deviations from it?)
If they have similar attitudes to mine, then the feelings are slightly positive, possibly because of receiving validation for my own behaviour. On the other hand, if the defectors are doing worse things, the feelings are fully negative, I don’t think there is any effect as you suggest.
To put things more concretely, I try not to do anything harmful but also don’t do anything that helps society (charity, activism, environmental stuff, etc.) unless I get some concrete benefit. When someone does defect in the way of being actively harmful or breaking laws, then my emotions are negative as I said, but interestingly not as strong as in the case of activists. Perhaps because such behaviour feels normal and expected from other people, or just because it doesn’t feel as much like a threat to me personally.
So I would say that your second suggestion is correct in my case, I do have a sweet spot of cooperation (basically what I do and feel is justified) and dislike deviations from that, with heavier weight on the “more cooperation” direction.
Or productivity. If you imagine a culture where you cannot accumulate wealth—for example, because all you produce is food (by hunting and gathering, no agriculture i.e. no land ownership), you don’t have the concept of money, the food will soon rot if not eaten, and you can only eat so much food—the people who can altruistically donate food to others would be the productive ones. And they would be noticed, because they would make good allies and sexual partners.
So even among people who obviously belong to the same social class, too much altruism feels like bragging about one’s capabilities. And how much is “too much”? Depends on (sub)cultural assumptions; if the local norm is close to zero, any altruism will be seen as a status move that deserves a counter-attack. Even in socialism, altruistic behavior signals something like “in a non-socialist society, I would be more successful than you”.
That’s… an interesting hypothesis, but it does not seem all that relevant to discussions of currently existing cultures in the developed world. None of the societies described in the OP are bands of hunter-gatherers, after all. And we should be wary of constructing just-so stories, as it is easy to be led astray…
Even in socialism, altruistic behavior signals something like “in a non-socialist society, I would be more successful than you”.
… and this is an example. The interpretation you describe here is not, in my experience, an accurate portrayal of how people in socialist societies perceive things.
Also, there may be a common sentiment that altruism is only ever intended as signaling (of virtue, of wealth, of whatever), and is thus a status-enhancing move. In my experience, people from such societies will often not comprehend (or be very skeptical of, even when they do comprehend) the idea of acting altruistically for purely… altruistic reasons.
This is a total armchair reply, but—I’m wondering if that ascription of ulterior intent is actually necessary. Like, rather than “this act of altruism is actually just intended as a status move and so should be punished”, perhaps just, “this act of altruism will increase their status and so should be punished”.
If we’re talking about the mindset of the punishers, then I can attest to it being the former and not the latter; there is usually no secret about this being people’s motivation—they state it aloud, and quite indignantly.
If we’re talking about the game-theoretical motivations behind that mindset, then of course you’re right.
However, note that in a regime where sincere altruism is not generally acknowledged as a likely possibility, the two interpretations do not meaningfully differ. The reason for this is that, both in the minds of the “altruists” and of the punishers, there is no reason to be altruistic except in order to gain status for oneself. (Thus “this act of altruism will increase their status” logically implies “this act of altruism is intended to increase their status”.)
In some societies it might not be considered socially acceptable to want to punish someone merely because what they are doing will raise their social status. That sort of thing is dishonest because social status is reputational and meant to be earned. If someone tries to punish you for doing something to earn status, they probably did not come by their social status by honest means.
In societies where people think like that, I imagine no one would want to say “this act of altruism will increase their status and so should be punished”, because that is a low status motive and expressing it out loud will lower their own status. So instead they have to spin things to make their own motive appear higher status. They would need to frame things to make the altruist look as if they’re the ones being dishonest and freeriding to get more social status than they’ve earned.
Hence “this act of altruism is only intended as a status move”, meaning “this person is not genuinely altruistic, you should not trust them more or think any better of them as a result of this altruism because that’s exactly what they want. They’re manipulating you into giving them more social status with purely selfish motives, and therefore they will not hesitate to stop being altruistic if it becomes advantageous for them later.”
A person making this claim might believe that they believe it, and believe that it is their real motive for punishing an altruist, whether or not it is. Because for one to admit that they’re trying to damage another’s reputation merely for the crime of doing something which improves their reputation would be to admit guilt of unvirtuous conduct oneself.
Why do you bring up tall poppy syndrome? In the formal context of the game, Melbourne had the most pro-social punishment, and the second-least anti-social punishment. Tall poppy syndrome seems to be people who think that they’re doing pro-social punishment, but are excessively suspicious of successful people.
I think the main point in that regard is that the study doesn’t distinguish between punishing cooperators because they are cooperators and punishing cooperators as a proxy for punishing punishers.
I, as well as some commenters on this thread, feel that the former phenomenon may exist, but yeah, it’s based on feelings and folk wisdom. It may also well be that if given identity of punishers the players would punish punishers and leave non-punishing cooperators alone.
What does this have to do with Tall Poppy Syndrome? Since the people who engage in Tall Poppy Syndrome don’t punish any cooperators in this game, the distinction doesn’t matter. If you expected them to do so in this game, it directly falsifies your expectations and there is something very different to learn from it.
You seem to believe that people who engage in Tall Poppy Syndrome would engage in anti-social punishment in this game. But they don’t. They engage in the least anti-social punishment and, by a large margin, the most pro-social punishment.
You seem to believe that people who engage in Tall Poppy Syndrome would engage in anti-social punishment in this game.
You’re reading a lot of things into my comments that isn’t there. I didn’t say this, I didn’t even imply this, and so I don’t have anything further to say on this subthread.
Would that reasoning apply to all societies around the world, including those in the West? If it does, it’s unlikely to explain the differences between the societies.
A very rough approximation is that the attitude I am describing is less likely to occur, or to be weaker if it does occur, in cultures where Protestantism is the dominant religion (such as Northern/Western Europe, and the United States). There, altruism is more likely to be seen as obligatory. Elsewhere, altruism is more likely to be seen as aberrant. (Edit: Rather, sincere altruism is more likely to be seen as aberrant, whereas false altruism will merely be seen as wealth signaling.)
Again, this is a very rough approximation and a rather imprecise description. But I think the pattern I am describing is real.
We may test this proposition by measuring relative differences in levels of charitable contributions between rich and poor people, across cultures, and see whether that relative difference is lower in Protestant-dominant cultures than in others (which is what my hypothesis predicts).
Excellent post!
Some scattered thoughts:
Tall poppy syndrome may be related.
In my experience, the attitude of antisocial punishers toward do-gooders is something like: “Who does he think he is? Thinks he’s so much better than the rest of us? Showing off how good he is?” (This may not be all of it, but it’s a strong component.)
This may be explained in part by two things:
Altruism is costly signaling for wealth. Contributing to the commons, or even not stealing (or doing other antisocial things), signals that you can afford to do so.
Also, there may be a common sentiment that altruism is only ever intended as signaling (of virtue, of wealth, of whatever), and is thus a status-enhancing move. In my experience, people from such societies will often not comprehend (or be very skeptical of, even when they do comprehend) the idea of acting altruistically for purely… altruistic reasons.
I’m surprised nobody proposed : “This person is promoting a social norm more stringent than my current behavior, I’ll whack him.”. What’s wrong with it ? Sure in this case the social norm is actually beneficial to the whacker, but we’re adaptation-executers, not fitness-maximizers.
FWIW I first read this post before this comment was written, then happened to think about it again today and had this idea, and came here to post it.
I do think it’s a dangerous fallacy to assume mutually-altruistic equilibria are optimal—‘I take care of me, you take care of you’ is sometimes more efficient than ‘you take care of me, I take care of you’.
Maybe someone needs to study whether Western countries ever exhibit “antisocial cooperation,” that is, an equilibrium of enforced public contributions in an “inefficient public goods game” where each of four players gets 20% of the central pool. Might be more likely if you structure it as tokens starting out in the center and players have the option to take them? (Call it the ‘enclosure game’, perhaps)
Ooh, I like this (while being aware that there’s a decent chance I’d be the sort of person who’d unreflectively do it)
I’ll lump two thoughts in here—one relates to SilentCat the other elsewhere but...
Like others I think this is a great insight and should be looked at by the authors, or other interested social scientists. I think it relates to a question I ask myself from time to time, though generally don’t get too far in answering. Where do we draw the line between public and private spheres of action?
I don’t think that is a fixed/static division over time and seems to have important implication for public policy. I’m tempted to say it might with the above proposed efficiency division. I’m not sure though.
The over-all results and some of the other comments also made me wonder if history—particularly as most of these locations seem to have been former USSR members. I’m just wondering if perhaps the culture legacy would support the behavior if innocent people were just as likely to be punished for what might be actions of other attempting to make everyone’s lives better (but often I suspect viewed as a threat to the authorities and government powers).
Nice idea. Maybe all the tokens should start in the pool and the players should have an option to withdraw them. I guess that would make people feel more explicitly “anti-social” if they did so.
I’m from Eastern Europe and have this tendency. I’ve been quite curious about why for example any kind of activism evokes negative emotions and I think at least in my case the answer seems to be what you’re proposing here. The prevalent attitude in society is to free-ride as much as you can and I’m also doing that. To answer the question from the beginning of the post, if we just let other people make cooperation the new norm, then I’ll be expected to cooperate too. I want to keep not caring about society, so I guess the actions of cooperators cash out emotionally as a threat to the status quo that I want to preserve.
Tell me if this gets too personal, but do defectors evoke positive emotions? (Because they lower societal expectations?) Or negative emotions? (i.e. you have a sweet spot of cooperation and dislike deviations from it?)
If they have similar attitudes to mine, then the feelings are slightly positive, possibly because of receiving validation for my own behaviour. On the other hand, if the defectors are doing worse things, the feelings are fully negative, I don’t think there is any effect as you suggest.
To put things more concretely, I try not to do anything harmful but also don’t do anything that helps society (charity, activism, environmental stuff, etc.) unless I get some concrete benefit. When someone does defect in the way of being actively harmful or breaking laws, then my emotions are negative as I said, but interestingly not as strong as in the case of activists. Perhaps because such behaviour feels normal and expected from other people, or just because it doesn’t feel as much like a threat to me personally.
So I would say that your second suggestion is correct in my case, I do have a sweet spot of cooperation (basically what I do and feel is justified) and dislike deviations from that, with heavier weight on the “more cooperation” direction.
Well that’s a mindset I don’t encounter often irl. Do you estimate you’re a central example in your country / culture ?
Or productivity. If you imagine a culture where you cannot accumulate wealth—for example, because all you produce is food (by hunting and gathering, no agriculture i.e. no land ownership), you don’t have the concept of money, the food will soon rot if not eaten, and you can only eat so much food—the people who can altruistically donate food to others would be the productive ones. And they would be noticed, because they would make good allies and sexual partners.
So even among people who obviously belong to the same social class, too much altruism feels like bragging about one’s capabilities. And how much is “too much”? Depends on (sub)cultural assumptions; if the local norm is close to zero, any altruism will be seen as a status move that deserves a counter-attack. Even in socialism, altruistic behavior signals something like “in a non-socialist society, I would be more successful than you”.
That’s… an interesting hypothesis, but it does not seem all that relevant to discussions of currently existing cultures in the developed world. None of the societies described in the OP are bands of hunter-gatherers, after all. And we should be wary of constructing just-so stories, as it is easy to be led astray…
… and this is an example. The interpretation you describe here is not, in my experience, an accurate portrayal of how people in socialist societies perceive things.
There is something like that in the West as well, the “Laws of Jante” prevalent in Scandinavia and the Netherlands:
You’re not to think you are anything special.
You’re not to think you are as good as we are.
You’re not to think you are smarter than we are.
You’re not to imagine yourself better than we are.
You’re not to think you know more than we do.
You’re not to think you are more important than we are.
You’re not to think you are good at anything.
You’re not to laugh at us.
You’re not to think anyone cares about you.
You’re not to think you can teach us anything.
This is a total armchair reply, but—I’m wondering if that ascription of ulterior intent is actually necessary. Like, rather than “this act of altruism is actually just intended as a status move and so should be punished”, perhaps just, “this act of altruism will increase their status and so should be punished”.
If we’re talking about the mindset of the punishers, then I can attest to it being the former and not the latter; there is usually no secret about this being people’s motivation—they state it aloud, and quite indignantly.
If we’re talking about the game-theoretical motivations behind that mindset, then of course you’re right.
However, note that in a regime where sincere altruism is not generally acknowledged as a likely possibility, the two interpretations do not meaningfully differ. The reason for this is that, both in the minds of the “altruists” and of the punishers, there is no reason to be altruistic except in order to gain status for oneself. (Thus “this act of altruism will increase their status” logically implies “this act of altruism is intended to increase their status”.)
In some societies it might not be considered socially acceptable to want to punish someone merely because what they are doing will raise their social status. That sort of thing is dishonest because social status is reputational and meant to be earned. If someone tries to punish you for doing something to earn status, they probably did not come by their social status by honest means.
In societies where people think like that, I imagine no one would want to say “this act of altruism will increase their status and so should be punished”, because that is a low status motive and expressing it out loud will lower their own status. So instead they have to spin things to make their own motive appear higher status. They would need to frame things to make the altruist look as if they’re the ones being dishonest and freeriding to get more social status than they’ve earned.
Hence “this act of altruism is only intended as a status move”, meaning “this person is not genuinely altruistic, you should not trust them more or think any better of them as a result of this altruism because that’s exactly what they want. They’re manipulating you into giving them more social status with purely selfish motives, and therefore they will not hesitate to stop being altruistic if it becomes advantageous for them later.”
A person making this claim might believe that they believe it, and believe that it is their real motive for punishing an altruist, whether or not it is. Because for one to admit that they’re trying to damage another’s reputation merely for the crime of doing something which improves their reputation would be to admit guilt of unvirtuous conduct oneself.
Why do you bring up tall poppy syndrome? In the formal context of the game, Melbourne had the most pro-social punishment, and the second-least anti-social punishment. Tall poppy syndrome seems to be people who think that they’re doing pro-social punishment, but are excessively suspicious of successful people.
I don’t think that’s the only cause.
How about you comment on the tension between your beliefs and the evidence at hand?
I think the main point in that regard is that the study doesn’t distinguish between punishing cooperators because they are cooperators and punishing cooperators as a proxy for punishing punishers.
I, as well as some commenters on this thread, feel that the former phenomenon may exist, but yeah, it’s based on feelings and folk wisdom. It may also well be that if given identity of punishers the players would punish punishers and leave non-punishing cooperators alone.
What does this have to do with Tall Poppy Syndrome? Since the people who engage in Tall Poppy Syndrome don’t punish any cooperators in this game, the distinction doesn’t matter. If you expected them to do so in this game, it directly falsifies your expectations and there is something very different to learn from it.
Sorry, I’ve replied to a wrong thread.
What tension is that, exactly? Be specific, please.
You seem to believe that people who engage in Tall Poppy Syndrome would engage in anti-social punishment in this game. But they don’t. They engage in the least anti-social punishment and, by a large margin, the most pro-social punishment.
You’re reading a lot of things into my comments that isn’t there. I didn’t say this, I didn’t even imply this, and so I don’t have anything further to say on this subthread.
Would that reasoning apply to all societies around the world, including those in the West? If it does, it’s unlikely to explain the differences between the societies.
I do not think it would.
A very rough approximation is that the attitude I am describing is less likely to occur, or to be weaker if it does occur, in cultures where Protestantism is the dominant religion (such as Northern/Western Europe, and the United States). There, altruism is more likely to be seen as obligatory. Elsewhere, altruism is more likely to be seen as aberrant. (Edit: Rather, sincere altruism is more likely to be seen as aberrant, whereas false altruism will merely be seen as wealth signaling.)
Again, this is a very rough approximation and a rather imprecise description. But I think the pattern I am describing is real.
We may test this proposition by measuring relative differences in levels of charitable contributions between rich and poor people, across cultures, and see whether that relative difference is lower in Protestant-dominant cultures than in others (which is what my hypothesis predicts).
What is it about Protestantism that makes it different from all other religions in altruism, in your opinion?
I ask as someone who grew up in a very Protestant-dominant culture.