“It’s for your own good”: Can a punishment truly be altruistic?
“Economics is the science that studies human behavior as the relationship between ends and scarce means that can be used in various ways.” This is how the British economist Lionel Robbins of the London School of Economics defined the subject matter of economics in a famous 1932 essay. Although some experiments date back quite a long time—such as research on risk—so-called “behavioral” economics remains a relatively recent field of study. This may seem paradoxical in light of that canonical definition. Nevertheless, it gained widespread recognition, particularly 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, a widely cited article was published in *Nature*, the result of research by Swiss economists Ernst Fehr and Urs Fischbacher. Their idea? Cooperation within our society is based primarily on a mechanism of “altruistic punishment.” Where individuals—those economists call “free riders”—can benefit from the efforts of their fellow citizens without having to pitch in, the threat that those who cooperate can carry out seems sufficient to deter such behavior. But if imposing a sanction entails a cost and yields no benefit to the individual who decides to do so, how can the mechanism work? Who will take the initiative to impose the sanction?
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 occurs precisely where there is a penalty. This penalty appears to stem from the anger of the cooperating individual upon realizing that not everyone is behaving virtuously. If the decision to punish is thus aimed at calming a negative emotional state, is the term “altruistic punishment” still relevant? In any case, this seems to diverge somewhat from the image of a parent who punishes 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, Professor of Experimental and Behavioral Economics, University of Rennes 1
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