An evolutionary account of reactions to a wrong

An evolutionary account of reactions to a wrong Giulia Andrighetto (giulia.andrighetto@istc.cnr.it) Institute of Cognitive Science and Technology (ISTC-CNR), via San Martino della Battaglia 44, 00185, Rome, Italy European University Institute (EUI), Fiesole, Italy Francesca Giardini (francesca.giardini@istc.cnr.it) Institute of Cognitive Science and Technology (ISTC-CNR), via San Martino della Battaglia 44, 00185, Rome, Italy Rosaria Conte (rosaria.conte@istc.cnr.it) Institute of Cognitive Science and Technology (ISTC-CNR), via San Martino della Battaglia 44, 00185, Rome, Italy Abstract In this work, we propose an evolutionary account of reactions to a wrong as an integrated set. Unlike other theories, we are not interested in revenge, punishment or sanction per se, but in their co-existence. We posit that this variety of reactions is needed in order to achieve different goals, but it also implies an increase in cognitive costs that requires to be explained from an evolutionary perspective. Moving from the identification of the psychological traits that uniquely define each reaction, two concurrent hypotheses are suggested and discussed: either the richness of human social life requests a variety of reactions, or the benefits of single reactions at the psychological level allowed these reactions to be maintained in the social life. Keywords: Evolution; punishment; revenge; sanction; cognitive influencing; norms; enforcing institutions social order. Introduction Human actions are potentially unbounded and much more opportunities are available when other people are involved. When talking about social actions we have to distinguish between actions and reactions, i.e., actions triggered by someone's else previous action. Reactions are a constitutive part of living in societies, and the ability of displaying the appropriate reaction in the right content is extremely important for our “ultra-social” species (Richerson & Boyd 1998, 2005; Hill et al. 2009). The nature and the intensity of reactions depend on both the actor and the triggering action, and it requires the capacity to forecast further reactions and to plan ahead, among other things. Humans are unique under this respect, and everyone has experienced how many reactions the same individual can display in response to the same action, even in the same context. Animals can modulate their reactions, in some cases they can also decide their behaviour on a cost-benefit analysis, but others' representations do not enter this picture (Clutton-Brock & Parker 1995; Jensen et al. 2007). Humans react because of what they believe and want, and because of what they want others to believe and of how they want them to behave. A particularly interesting class of social reactions is that triggered in response to a wrong. Retaliation, revenge, punishment and sanctions have been a matter of interest since the rise of Western culture, as witnessed by the fact that the need to understand and explain motives for reacting to wrongs never ceased since pre-Homeric Greece to these days (for an analysis of the differences among these reactions see Giardini et al. 2010). Philosophers, social scientists, political scientists, psychologists, anthropologists have been striving to answer the fundamental question: why do people react to a wrong? In many circumstances reacting is more costly than standing, it requires some kind of planning, and it also implies the possibility of suffering a counter-reaction. Even more striking, people react to wrongs suffered by strangers, intervene in others' disputes, and sanction others when failing to comply with norms that they are not supposed to enforce. Although several scholars have been interested in explaining the evolution of revenge, punishment and sanction (Lorenz, 1966; Hamilton, 1970; Boyd & Richerson, 1992; Clutton-Brock & Parker 1995; Gardner & West, 2004; Jensen, 2010), these phenomena have been usually considered in isolation and not as a rich and complex repertoire. We propose that revenge, punishment and sanction are different reactions that should not be considered in isolation but as interdependent and complementary. If we look at them as an intertwined set, we need to explain the reason why they are different, but we also need to understand why we still have more than one reaction to an offense, and how the related extra cognitive costs are compensated. Our goal is to explain the decision to apply punishment in terms of the complementary decisions to use neither revenge nor sanction, thus understanding the motives behind each and every reaction. We propose that this variety is necessary because, unlike animals, humans' reactions do not only target the offender's behavior, but also her mental states, as well as the victim's mental states. Comparing different reactions, we highlight an evolutionary trajectory that links revenge, punishment and sanction by explaining costs and benefits of each reaction. Having the opportunity to choose among several responses means higher cognitive costs to select between actions, and to choose the most appropriate one. Therefore, a set of questions arises: Why do we have such a repertoire? Can we identify evolved mechanisms that allowed us to