Publication Date:
2004-08-31
Description:
Many people voluntarily incur costs to punish violations of social norms. Evolutionary models and empirical evidence indicate that such altruistic punishment has been a decisive force in the evolution of human cooperation. We used H2 15O positron emission tomography to examine the neural basis for altruistic punishment of defectors in an economic exchange. Subjects could punish defection either symbolically or effectively. Symbolic punishment did not reduce the defector's economic payoff, whereas effective punishment did reduce the payoff. We scanned the subjects' brains while they learned about the defector's abuse of trust and determined the punishment. Effective punishment, as compared with symbolic punishment, activated the dorsal striatum, which has been implicated in the processing of rewards that accrue as a result of goal-directed actions. Moreover, subjects with stronger activations in the dorsal striatum were willing to incur greater costs in order to punish. Our findings support the hypothesis that people derive satisfaction from punishing norm violations and that the activation in the dorsal striatum reflects the anticipated satisfaction from punishing defectors.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉de Quervain, Dominique J-F -- Fischbacher, Urs -- Treyer, Valerie -- Schellhammer, Melanie -- Schnyder, Ulrich -- Buck, Alfred -- Fehr, Ernst -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2004 Aug 27;305(5688):1254-8.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Division of Psychiatry Research, University of Zurich, Lenggstrasse 31, 8029 Zurich, Switzerland. quervain@bli.unizh.ch〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15333831" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Adult
;
Altruism
;
Brain Mapping
;
Caudate Nucleus/*physiology/radionuclide imaging
;
Corpus Striatum/*physiology/radionuclide imaging
;
*Emotions
;
Frontal Lobe/physiology/radionuclide imaging
;
Games, Experimental
;
Humans
;
Male
;
*Personal Satisfaction
;
Prefrontal Cortex/physiology/radionuclide imaging
;
*Punishment
;
Reward
;
Surveys and Questionnaires
;
Thalamus/physiology/radionuclide imaging
;
Tomography, Emission-Computed
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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