Placing our trust wisely is both difficult and important. The challenge of knowing who to trust inheres at least partially in the fact that coinciding interests cannot be taken for granted, and that language, as the principal medium through which would-be interactants make their interests known, doesn’t discriminate between true and feigned proclamations of good intent. Because our patterns of trust partition the world into reliable and unreliable sources, trust is also important: it determines how we distribute our social and (...) epistemic dependencies, which in turn informs much of what we believe and do. The fact that our interactions with the world and each other are increasingly mediated by digital communication technologies affects both these elements of trust: though unabated access to the internet invites us to distribute our dependencies more broadly, the kinds of information environments that we encounter online make misplaced trust a more common occurrence. I argue that a large part of the problem, as well as one possible set of solutions, resides in a deceptively simple dictum: the internet makes talk cheap, and cheap talk can’t be trusted. (shrink)

Why do people enter devoted relationships when they can continue looking for better partners? The “strategic ignorance” account holds that remaining ignorant about alternative partners is a signal that you are a high‐quality partner. Despite this intuition, the authors show that evolution favors a “look while allowing your partner to look” strategy, unless the costs of being rejected by a looking partner are extremely high. Thus, the origins of love must be found elsewhere.

Trust is often perceived as having great value. For example, there is a strong belief that trust will bring different sorts of public goods and help us preserve common resources. A related concept which is just as important, but perhaps not explicitly discussed to the same extent as “trust”, is “reliance” or “confidence”. To be able to rely on some agent is often seen as a prerequisite for being able to trust this agent. Up to now, the conceptual discussion about (...) the definition of trust and reliance has been rational in the sense that most people involved have offered arguments for their respective views, or against competing views. While these arguments rely on some criterion or other, these criteria are rarely explicitly stated, and to our knowledge, no systematic account of such criteria has been offered. In this paper we give an account of what criteria we should use to assess tentative definitions of “trust” and “reliance”. We will also offer our own well-founded definitions of “trust” and “reliance”. Trust should be regarded as a kind of reliance and we defend what we call “the accountability view” of trust, by appealing to the desiderata we identify in the first parts of the paper. (shrink)

Should the norms of honor cultures be classified as a variety of morality? In this paper, we address this question by considering various empirical bases on which norms can be taxonomically organised. This question is of interest both as an exercise in philosophy of social science, and for its potential implications in meta-ethical debates. Using recent data from anthropology and evolutionary game theory, we argue that the most productive classification emphasizes the strategic role that moral norms play in generating assurance (...) and stabilizing cooperation. Because honor norms have a similar functional role, this account entails honor norms are indeed a variety of moral norm. We also propose an explanation of why honor norms occur in a relatively unified, phenotypically distinctive cluster, thereby explaining why it is tempting to regard them as taxonomically distinct. (shrink)

Punishment as a response to impairment of individual or group welfare may be found not only among humans but also among a wide range of social animals. In some cases, acts of punishment serve to increase social cooperation among conspecifics. Such phenomena motivate the search for the biological foundations of punishment among humans. Of special interest are cases of pro-social punishment of individuals harming others. Behavioral studies have shown that in economic games people punish exploiters even at a cost to (...) their own welfare. Additionally, neuroimaging studies have reported activity during the planning of such punishment in brain areas involved in the anticipation of reward. Such findings hint that there is an evolutionarily honed basic drive to punish social offenders. I argue that the transfer of punishment authority from the individual to the group requires that social offenders be punished as a public good, even if such punishment is not effective as retribution or deterrent. Furthermore, the social need for punishment of offenders has implications for alternatives to incarceration, publicity of punishment, and judicial structure. (shrink)

Third-party punishment (TPP) has been shown to be an effective mechanism for maintaining human cooperation. However, it is puzzling how third-party punishment can be maintained, as punishers take on personal costs to punish defectors. Although there is evidence that punishers are preferred as partners because third-party punishment is regarded by bystanders as a costly signal of trustworthiness, other studies show that this signaling value of punishment can be severely attenuated because third-party helping is viewed as a stronger signal of trustworthiness (...) than third-party punishment. Third-party helpers donate their payoffs to victims of defection in games instead of punishing defectors as third-party punishers do. Then, under what circumstances can third-party punishment be maintained by costly signaling when helping is also present? We show that punishers are preferred over helpers by fourth-party individuals as their delegates to deter potential exploitation. This suggests that costly signaling can facilitate the maintenance of third-party punishment in partner choice with delegation interactions. (shrink)

Empathy and altruistic behavior are more crucial abilities for pre-service teachers to possess when compared with other study fields. The relationship between empathy and altruistic behavior in Chinese pre-service teachers and their underlying mechanisms, however, has received relatively little attention in the literature. Therefore, the goal of the current study was to examine the links between study fields, self-control, emotional empathy, and altruistic preferences among undergraduates and graduates in five Chinese universities with the Interpersonal Reactivity Index-C Questionnaire, the Self-Control Scale, (...) and the Chinese Self-Report Altruism Scale tests. The results showed a significant difference between pre-service and non-pre-service teachers in empathic concern and self-control. Furthermore, empathic concern and altruistic behavior tendency of pre-service teachers were significantly higher than those of non-pre-service teachers. Moreover, mediation analyses indicated that empathic concern partially mediated the relationship between study fields and altruistic tendency. Moderated mediation analysis further revealed that self-control buffered the relation between empathic concern and altruistic behavior tendency. These results demonstrate that altruistic tendency of pre-service teachers is influenced by empathic concern and self-control. (shrink)

Upholding cooperative norms via punishment is of central importance in organizations. But what effect does punishing have on the reputation of the punisher? Although previous research shows third parties can garner reputational benefits for punishing transgressors who violate social norms, we proposed that such reputational benefits can vary based on the perceived motive for the punishment. In Studies 1 and 2, we found that individuals who endorsed a consequentialist (versus deontological) motive for punishing were seen as more trustworthy. In Study (...) 3, the results showed that when pitted against one another, a person who endorsed a consequentialist (versus deontological) motive for punishing was chosen more often as a partner in a Trust Game. In Study 4, we found that a manager who expressed a consequentialist reason for punishing an employee was seen as having less psychopathic tendencies, and this related to the manager being perceived as more trustworthy and a superior cooperation partner. Using a recall methodology, Study 5 results showed that employees who perceived their managers as having more consequentialist (versus deontological) motives for punishing also perceived their managers as being less psychopathic and more trustworthy. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. (shrink)

Punishment is fundamental to the evolution of cooperative norms in teams, organizations, and societies. Based on findings that people are faster when punishing others (relative to when withholding punishment), dual-process theories of punishment assert that humans have an intuitive tendency to punish, which requires effortful deliberation to overcome. Here, we propose an alternative single-process theory that models punishment decisions as a sequential sampling process. We provide supporting evidence for this theory using a public goods game experiment that experimentally manipulates the (...) cost–benefit tradeoff across the game. We show that people are not systematically faster when punishing (versus withholding) across tradeoffs. We also find an inverted-U-shaped relationship between response times and the strength of preferences for punishing, and a negative association between punishment rates and the relative speed of punishment across individuals. Further computational analysis using the drift–diffusion model (DDM) reveals that, on average, people exhibit a pre-disposition to withhold punishment. Our study provides a unified single-process framework for studying the micro-foundations of punishment and integrating process measures to better describe and predict behavior. (shrink)

This paper examines and contrasts two closely related evolutionary explanations in human behaviour: signalling theory, and the theory of Credibility Enhancing Displays. Both have been proposed to explain costly, dangerous, or otherwise ‘extravagant’ social behaviours, especially in the context of religious belief and practice, and each have spawned significant lines of empirical research. However, the relationship between these two theoretical frameworks is unclear, and research which engages both of them is largely absent. In this paper we seek to address this (...) gap at the theoretical level, examining the core differences between the two approaches and prospects and conditions for future empirical testing. We clarify the dynamical and mechanistic bases of signalling and CREDs as explanatory models and contrast the previous uses to which they have been put in the human sciences. Because of idiosyncrasies regarding those uses, several commonly supposed differences and comparative advantages are actually misleading and not in fact generalisable. We also show that signalling and CREDs theories as explanatory models are not interchangeable, because of deep structural differences. As we illustrate, the proposed causal networks of each theory are distinct, with important differences in the endogeneity of various phenomena within each model and their explanatory targets. As a result, they can be seen as complementary rather than in competition. We conclude by surveying the current state of the literature and identifying the differential predictions which could underpin more comprehensive empirical comparison in future research. (shrink)

Third-party fairness maintenance could win some reputational benefits, and it includes two methods: punishment and compensation. We predicted that the third parties' preference between punishment and compensation are affected by whether they are free to choose between the two methods, and the affection could be interpreted through reputational benefits. The present study includes two sections. In Study 1, the participants acted as fourth parties who were asked to rate the reputations of the third parties who had chosen different response methods (...) to an unfair result of the dictator game. The results showed that there was no reputational difference between the two methods when third parties were not free to choose, but the reputation of compensation was better when third parties were free to choose. In Study 2, the participants acted as third parties. The participants were asked to choose a method to respond to an unfair result of the dictator game. There were two reputational contexts: secret and open. The results showed that when third parties were not free to choose, they had no preference between the two methods under the two reputational contexts, but when third parties were free to choose freely, they prefer punishment under the secret context but prefer compensation under the open context. This study systematically reveals a reputational interaction between fourth and third parties, and verifies the affection of reputational benefits on the third parties' preference between punishment and compensation. (shrink)