"It's for your own good": can punishment really be altruistic?
"Economics is the science that studies human behavior as a relationship between ends and scarce means that can be used in different ways." This is how British economist Lionel Robbins of the London School of Economics characterized the subject of economics in a famous 1932 text. Although some experiments are relatively old, such as questions about risk, "behavioral" economics remains a fairly recent field of study. This may seem paradoxical in light of this canonical definition. Nevertheless, it was recognized in particular with the Nobel Prize in Economics awarded to Daniel Kahneman and Vernon Smith in 2002.
Marc Willinger, University of Montpellier and David Masclet, University of Rennes 1
The following year, an article was published in Nature, which has since been widely cited, based on the work of Swiss economists Ernst Fehr and Urs Fischbacher. Their idea? Cooperation within our society is essentially based on a mechanism of "altruistic punishment." Where individuals, whom economists refer to as "free riders," can benefit from the efforts of their fellow citizens without having to contribute themselves, the threat of punishment by those who cooperate seems sufficient to deter such behavior. But if punishment comes at a cost and brings no benefit to the individual who decides to carry it out, how can the mechanism work? Who will take the initiative to punish?
The laboratory experiment conducted by these two economists and described in this second episode by Marc Willinger (University of Montpellier) and David Masclet (University of Rennes 1) shows that cooperation does indeed occur when sanctions are imposed. These sanctions seem to be based on the anger of the cooperating individual when they realize that not everyone is behaving virtuously. If the decision to punish is aimed at calming a negative emotional state, is the term "altruistic punishment" still relevant? In any case, this seems to stray somewhat from the image of a parent punishing their child with the classic argument: "It's for their own good"...
Marc Willinger, Professor of Economics, Behavioral and Experimental Economics, University of Montpellier and David Masclet, University Professor of Experimental and Behavioral Economics, University of Rennes 1
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