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Punishment of offenders is one of the most universal features of human behavior. Throughout history, ranging across a multitude of cultures including the ancient hunter-gatherers to our contemporary courts of law, it is extraordinarily common for people to punish offenders within their groups. By the same token, it's important to understand that punishment is not only restricted to criminal offenders, but actually emerges within all spheres of our social life, including: corporations, our public institutions, in traffic, during sports matches, in our schools, and more. Punishment strongly influences what we think, how we feel, and what we do.
The Moral Punishment Instinct asserts that people possess this exact instinct within themselves: a hard-wired tendency to aggress against those who violate the norms of their group. We have evolved this instinct because of its power to control our behavior by curbing selfishness and free-riding, thereby providing incentives to stimulate the mutual cooperation that our ancient ancestors needed in order to survive the challenging natural environments.
In this book, Jan-Willem van Prooijen methodically describes how punishment originates from moral emotions, stimulates cooperation, and shapes the social life of human beings. Guided by a host of recognizable and relatable examples, this book illuminates how the moral punishment instinct manifests itself among a variety of modern human cultures, children, the hunter-gatherer tribes, and even non-human animals--all while accounting for the role of this instinct in religion, war, racial bias, restorative justice, gossip, torture, and radical terrorism.
List of contents
- Preface
- Chapter 1 Introduction
- Chapter 2 Motives for Punishment
- Chapter 3 Reason or Intuition?
- Chapter 4 Origins of the Moral Punishment Instinct
- Chapter 5 Punishment and Cooperation
- Chapter 6 When Punishment Backfires
- Chapter 7 Black Sheeps versus Ingroup Favoritism
- Chapter 8 Punishing Dangerous Outsiders
- Chapter 9 Revenge, Gossip, and Restorative Justice
- Chapter 10 Conclusions and Implications
- Notes
- References
- Index
About the author
Jan-Willem van Prooijen is Associate Professor at the Department of Experimental and Applied Psychology of VU University Amsterdam, and a Senior Researcher at the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement (NSCR).
Summary
Punishment of offenders is one of the most universal features of human behavior. Throughout history, ranging across a multitude of cultures including the ancient hunter-gatherers to our contemporary courts of law, it is extraordinarily common for people to punish offenders within their groups. By the same token, it's important to understand that punishment is not only restricted to criminal offenders, but actually emerges within all spheres of our social life, including: corporations, our public institutions, in traffic, during sports matches, in our schools, and more. Punishment strongly influences what we think, how we feel, and what we do.
The Moral Punishment Instinct asserts that people possess this exact instinct within themselves: a hard-wired tendency to aggress against those who violate the norms of their group. We have evolved this instinct because of its power to control our behavior by curbing selfishness and free-riding, thereby providing incentives to stimulate the mutual cooperation that our ancient ancestors needed in order to survive the challenging natural environments.
In this book, Jan-Willem van Prooijen methodically describes how punishment originates from moral emotions, stimulates cooperation, and shapes the social life of human beings. Guided by a host of recognizable and relatable examples, this book illuminates how the moral punishment instinct manifests itself among a variety of modern human cultures, children, the hunter-gatherer tribes, and even non-human animals--all while accounting for the role of this instinct in religion, war, racial bias, restorative justice, gossip, torture, and radical terrorism.
Additional text
This book could make for an interesting read for students and general readers, if only to stimulate renewed debate on the contentious ideas it rehashes
