Sadism, the Intuitive System, and Antisocial Punishment in the Public Goods Game

In public goods situations, a specific destructive behavior emerges when individuals face the possibility of punishing others: antisocial punishment, that is, costly punishing cooperative individuals. So far, little is known about the (intuitive or reflective) processes underlying antisocial punishment. Building on the Social Heuristics Hypothesis and arguing that antisocial punishment reflects the basic characteristics of sadism, namely, aggressive behavior to dominate and to harm other individuals it is assumed that everyday sadists intuitively engage in antisocial punishment. Two studies document that activating (Study 1) and inhibiting (Study 2) the intuitive system when a punishment option can be realized in one-shot iterated public goods games increased (Study 1) and reduced (Study 2) antisocial punishment, in particular among individuals who reported a proneness to sadism. In sum, the present research suggests that sadistic tendencies executed intuitively play a crucial role regarding antisocial punishment in public goods situations.

[1]  Ernst Fehr,et al.  Parochial altruism in humans , 2006, Nature.

[2]  Ernst Fehr,et al.  Rethinking fast and slow based on a critique of reaction-time reverse inference , 2015, Nature Communications.

[3]  N. McGlynn.  Thinking fast and slow. , 2014, Australian veterinary journal.

[4]  E. Fehr,et al.  Altruistic punishment in humans , 2002, Nature.

[5]  G. Harris,et al.  The functions of aggression by male teenagers. , 2000, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[6]  Robert A. Moffitt,et al.  The Uses of Tobit Analysis , 1980 .

[7]  David G. Rand,et al.  Social heuristics shape intuitive cooperation , 2014, Nature Communications.

[8]  Andreas Glöckner,et al.  Spontaneous cooperation for prosocials, but not for proselfs: Social value orientation moderates spontaneous cooperation behavior , 2016, Scientific Reports.

[9]  Oliver P Hauser,et al.  Punishment does not promote cooperation under exploration dynamics when anti-social punishment is possible. , 2014, Journal of theoretical biology.

[10]  Delroy L. Paulhus,et al.  Differentiating the Dark Triad Within the Interpersonal Circumplex , 2012 .

[11]  David G. Rand,et al.  Spontaneous giving and calculated greed , 2012, Nature.

[12]  David G. Rand,et al.  Reflection does not undermine self-interested prosociality , 2014, Front. Behav. Neurosci..

[13]  J. Keller,et al.  Vigilant Self–regulation and Costly Punishment in Public Goods Situations , 2013 .

[14]  E. Dijk,et al.  Promoting cooperation in social dilemmas: the use of sanctions , 2015 .

[15]  G. Bodenhausen,et al.  Retribution and emotional regulation: The effects of time delay in angry economic interactions. , 2011 .

[16]  A. Hayes.  Introduction to Mediation, Moderation, and Conditional Process Analysis: A Regression-Based Approach , 2013 .

[17]  Jacob Cohen,et al.  A power primer. , 1992, Psychological bulletin.

[18]  W K Campbell,et al.  The Intrinsic Appeal of Evil: Sadism, Sensational Thrills, and Threatened Egotism , 1999, Personality and social psychology review : an official journal of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.

[19]  Nanrong He,et al.  Ego-Depletion Promotes Altruistic Punishment , 2015 .

[20]  Delroy L. Paulhus,et al.  Behavioral Confirmation of Everyday Sadism , 2013, Psychological science.

[21]  Benjamin E. Hilbig,et al.  Cognitive conflict in social dilemmas: An analysis of response dynamics , 2014, Judgment and Decision Making.

[22]  D. Cooke.  Psychopathy, Sadism and Serial Killing , 2001 .

[23]  David G. Rand,et al.  Time Pressure Increases Cooperation in Competitively Framed Social Dilemmas , 2014, PloS one.

[24]  Stefan Pfattheicher,et al.  Understanding the Dark Side of Costly Punishment: The Impact of Individual Differences in Everyday Sadism and Existential Threat , 2015 .

[25]  G. Hardin,et al.  The Tragedy of the Commons , 1968, Green Planet Blues.

[26]  J. Keller,et al.  Individual differences in antisocial punishment in public goods situations: : the interplay of cortisol with testosterone and dominance , 2013 .

[27]  R. Rodgers,et al.  The Dark Tetrad: Identifying personality profiles in high-school students , 2015 .

[28]  David G. Rand,et al.  The evolution of antisocial punishment in optional public goods games. , 2011, Nature communications.

[29]  Hawaii,et al.  Supporting Online Material Materials and Methods Figs. S1 to S6 Tables S1 and S2 Database S1 Antisocial Punishment across Societies , 2022 .

[30]  Daniel N. Jones,et al.  Introducing the Short Dark Triad (SD3) , 2014, Assessment.

[31]  Daniel Balliet,et al.  Reward, punishment, and cooperation: a meta-analysis. , 2011, Psychological bulletin.

[32]  David G. Rand.  Cooperation, Fast and Slow , 2016, Psychological science.

[33]  Alexander K. Wagner,et al.  Money, depletion, and prosociality in the dictator game , 2015 .

[34]  S. Gächter,et al.  Culture and cooperation , 2010, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[35]  W. Lam.  Governing the Commons , 2010 .

[36]  Pranjal H. Mehta,et al.  Importance of considering testosterone-cortisol interactions in predicting human aggression and dominance. , 2011, Aggressive behavior.

[37]  E. Erdfelder,et al.  Statistical power analyses using G*Power 3.1: Tests for correlation and regression analyses , 2009, Behavior research methods.

[38]  U. Fischbacher.  z-Tree: Zurich toolbox for ready-made economic experiments , 1999 .

[39]  David G. Rand,et al.  Intuition, deliberation, and the evolution of cooperation , 2016, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[40]  J. Keller,et al.  Towards a Biopsychological Understanding of Costly Punishment: The Role of Basal Cortisol , 2014, PloS one.

[41]  Tobias Greitemeyer.  Everyday sadism predicts violent video game preferences , 2015 .

[42]  Pranjal H. Mehta,et al.  Testosterone and cortisol jointly regulate dominance: Evidence for a dual-hormone hypothesis , 2010, Hormones and Behavior.

[43]  David G. Rand,et al.  Social Heuristics and Social Roles: Intuition Favors Altruism for Women But Not for Men , 2016, Journal of experimental psychology. General.

[44]  A. Miller,et al.  The social psychology of good and evil , 2004 .

[45]  David G. Rand,et al.  Fast but Not Intuitive, Slow but Not Reflective: Decision Conflict Drives Reaction Times in Social Dilemmas , 2015, Journal of experimental psychology. General.

[46]  J. Warren,et al.  The sexually sadistic criminal and his offenses. , 1990, The Bulletin of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law.

[47]  J. Haidt,et al.  The Moral Emotions , 2009 .

[48]  D. Paulhus,et al.  Trolls just want to have fun , 2014 .

[49]  Jason Davies,et al.  The psychometric properties and utility of the Short Sadistic Impulse Scale (SSIS). , 2011, Psychological assessment.

[50]  David G. Rand,et al.  Anti-social Punishment Can Prevent the Co-evolution of Punishment and Cooperation , 2010 .

[51]  David Huffman,et al.  Competition Between Organizational Groups: Its Impact on Altruistic and Anti-Social Motivations , 2011 .

[52]  Valerio Capraro,et al.  Social Setting, Intuition, and Experience in Laboratory Experiments Interact to Shape Cooperative Decision-Making , 2015, ArXiv.

[53]  J. Bryson,et al.  Homo homini lupus? Explaining antisocial punishment , 2013 .

[54]  Larry E. Toothaker,et al.  Multiple Regression: Testing and Interpreting Interactions , 1991 .

[55]  Peter P. J. L. Verkoeijen,et al.  Does Intuition Cause Cooperation? , 2014, PloS one.