Other-regarding preferences and altruistic punishment: A Darwinian perspective

TL;DR

This paper explores how different other-regarding preferences influence altruistic punishment from an evolutionary perspective, demonstrating that a selfish form of inequity aversion can explain observed behaviors.

Contribution

It introduces a new combined empirical and simulation approach to explain altruistic punishment using evolutionary models and behavioral economics.

Findings

Disadvantageous inequity aversion explains observed punishment levels

Altruistic punishment emerges when selfish inequity aversion dominates

The model aligns closely with experimental data

Abstract

This article examines the effect of different other-regarding preference types on the emergence of altruistic punishment behavior from an evolutionary perspective. Our findings corroborate, complement, and interlink the experimental and theoretical literature that has shown the importance of other-regarding behavior in various decision settings. We find that a selfish variant of inequity aversion is sufficient to quantitatively explain the level of punishment observed in contemporary experiments: If disadvantageous inequity aversion is the predominant preference type, altruistic punishment emerges in our model to a level that precisely matches the empirical observations. We use a new approach that closely combines empirical results from a public goods experiment together with an evolutionary simulation model. Hereby we apply ideas from behavioral economics, complex system science, and evolutionary biology.