Punishment sustains large-scale cooperation in prestate warfare

[thinker_jeff]

 

Abstract

 

Understanding cooperation and punishment in small-scale societies is crucial for explaining the origins of human cooperation. We studied warfare among the Turkana, a politically uncentralized, egalitarian, nomadic pastoral society in East Africa. Based on a representative sample of 88 recent raids, we show that the Turkana sustain costly cooperation in combat at a remarkably large scale, at least in part, through punishment of free-riders. Raiding parties comprised several hundred warriors and participants are not kin or day-to-day interactants. Warriors incur substantial risk of death and produce collective benefits. Cowardice and desertions occur, and are punished by community-imposed sanctions, including collective corporal punishment and fines. Furthermore, Turkana norms governing warfare benefit the ethnolinguistic group, a population of a half-million people, at the expense of smaller social groupings. These results challenge current views that punishment is unimportant in small-scale societies and that human cooperation evolved in small groups of kin and familiar individuals. Instead, these results suggest that cooperation at the larger scale of ethnolinguistic units enforced by third-party sanctions could have a deep evolutionary history in the human species.

 

Link: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/06/03/1105604108.abstract

 

 

[Athena]

Very interesting study. Of course I reflected on my own life experiences to understand the concepts. Immediately what came to mind is being the new kid in a school. There are always clicks and a person is either on the inside or the outside. The benefits of being inside the click are social acceptance and possibly more. Being on the outside is of course social rejection, and this can take the form of painful punishments, because victimizing others is a way to gain status. This is so for gangs or cooperate folks, laughing at the dummies who are economic victims. To be on the inside, it is necessary to pick on someone. Among girls this is generally limited to verbal slurs against the victim, but it can include acts of violence. Seriously, if one does not go along with this abusive behavior, one does not remain an accepted member of group, and may become a target of this social rejection. With youths form violent gangs, or cooperate executives, this can be dangerous.

 

I remember when this involved smoking, drinking, drugs and crime, determining if one is on the inside or the outside, and the status within the group. I don't think we have look as far away as Africa, but can find the same basic human behaviors in our cities.

 

PS, I really hate it when people speak self righteously of the parents role in raising children. By the time a child reaches puberty, it is peers and events such as wars or the advent of computer technology, that will have the strongest influence on child, not parents. We are biologically programmed to leave our parents and find our place in the world.

Edited June 22, 2011 by Athena

[A Tripolation]

PS, I really hate it when people speak self righteously of the parents role in raising children. By the time a child reaches puberty, it is peers and events such as wars or the advent of computer technology, that will have the strongest influence on child, not parents.

 

Do you have any proof for this bold statement? I certainly know that this didn't apply to me. Ergo, me not drinking/smoking/participating in illicit activities as a teen.

[thinker_jeff]

Very interesting study. Of course I reflected on my own life experiences to understand the concepts. Immediately what came to mind is being the new kid in a school. There are always clicks and a person is either on the inside or the outside. The benefits of being inside the click are social acceptance and possibly more. Being on the outside is of course social rejection, and this can take the form of painful punishments, because victimizing others is a way to gain status. This is so for gangs or cooperate folks, laughing at the dummies who are economic victims. To be on the inside, it is necessary to pick on someone. Among girls this is generally limited to verbal slurs against the victim, but it can include acts of violence. Seriously, if one does not go along with this abusive behavior, one does not remain an accepted member of group, and may become a target of this social rejection. With youths form violent gangs, or cooperate executives, this can be dangerous.

 

Noel Card, a psychologist at Arizona University, who writes about adolescent relationships gone wrong in the latest issue of the Developmental Psychology journal, said results from 26 studies involving 23,000 children showed 35% of youngsters had at least one “antipathetic relationship”.

 

The weight of previous research has suggested that only harm can come from hostility, but this was skewed by studies of the small number of children who are so different from their classmates that they suffer complete “peer rejection”. Once this is factored out, the damaging effects are slight.

 

Researchers at Strathclyde University in Glasgow studied 100 children aged nine to 13 and asked them for their accounts of being bullied and of being befriended by a fellow pupil.

 

Donald Christie, a professor of childhood studies at the university, said: “When we asked them to tell us about the time somebody did something mean or nasty, we had chapter and verse. We couldn’t write it down fast enough. But when we asked them to tell us when somebody did something nice, we had blank looks.

 

Link: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/education/article7133986.ece

[Athena]

Do you have any proof for this bold statement? I certainly know that this didn't apply to me. Ergo, me not drinking/smoking/participating in illicit activities as a teen.

 

Oh you are right, and I am wrong. The number one thing teenagers think about is pleasing their parents. This is far more important to the average teenager than what their peers think of them, or what is popular among their peers, and they never, ever test their limits, or bulk at being controlled by their parents.

Edited June 23, 2011 by Athena

[A Tripolation]

Oh you are right, and I am wrong. The number one thing teenagers think about is pleasing their parents. This is far more important to the average teenager than what their peers think of them, or what is popular among their peers, and they never, ever test their limits, or bulk at being controlled by their parents.

 

That certainly was true with me and a lot of my friends. We had the utmost respect for our parents and didn't want to disappoint them. So what's your point?

[imatfaal]

I think that all that can be said about the age that children stop respecting and start rebelling against their parents is that it varies. It can vary between siblings, communities, cultures, social groupings etc and we certainly cannot make any strong predictions that cover teenagers as a group. Personally, I am similar to Trip in that I still look to my parents for guidance and support; and consciously or subconsciously seek/enjoy their endorsement or praise.

 

It would seem to be a very important sociological question and I would be staggered if there isn't reams of literature on it; and even more surprised if it came to a single conclusion.

[Athena]

That certainly was true with me and a lot of my friends. We had the utmost respect for our parents and didn't want to disappoint them. So what's your point?

 

I thought I changed my post, but I guess something went wrong. In the morning, I realized the differences in our ages could result in you and I having different points of view, and my words could have a different meaning to you, then than do to me. I apologize if I offended you.

 

My point is, I was using personal experience, and knowledge of humans and animals, to support the notion that punishment sustains large-scale cooperation. This happens in war and it happens in gang behavior, and even in cooperate offices. The punishment takes different forms. It can be just social rejection. We know the Spartans were completely intolerant of a soldier breaking formation. They would never again be accepted, and would forever be treated very badly, spit on, shamed. There mothers would send them to war, saying it would be better for them come carried on the shields, than to come home cowards. We can observe similar behavior among primates, where social rejection takes the form of being pushed to the fringes, where life is more dangerous, because of less group protection. It is important to be close to the alpha male or female.

 

Now if your parent is not an alpha parent and you cling to your parent, instead of trying to get on the good side of the alpha leader, you will not do as well in life. We are social animals, and nature wants us to conform to the group, so we are programmed to become independent of our parents, and to do what our peers are doing. This can lead to doing things that we might consider "wrong", because of peer pressure. It can also lead to good things like learning a new technology, even if parents have no interest in the new technology.

 

Immatfaal, it is great if your parents are well respected people, enjoying a high social status, however, when I served on school policy committee, I realized there can be a problem when a child's parents are not the best citizens. When the parents are bad citizens, perhaps violent people with their own set of rules, then we would pray social pressure leads their children to making different choices. In such cases, the school carries a difficult of burden of socializing the child, without harming the family relationships. We know it is not best for the child's future to following in the foot steps of parents who are poor citizens.

Edited June 24, 2011 by Athena