Professor Zachary Garfield will introduce his research on punishment systems across 60 culturally diverse societies on Wednesday, February 11th at 12:30 p.m. He will showcase the socioecological drivers of punishment diversity.   

Abstract: 

Punishment systems are fundamental to fostering and maintaining cooperation within human societies, yet the variation in punishment mechanisms—especially third-party punishment (3PP)—across diverse socioecological contexts remains underexplored. We analyzed 2,029 ethnographic texts from 60 culturally diverse, largely nonindustrial societies (coded 5,327 times) to examine supporting evidence for second-party punishment (2PP) and 3PP. These included cases where 3PP was enacted for kin, partners, or general community members. Using Bayesian multi-level regression models, we tested pre-registered hypotheses examining how three society-level measures of “complexity” (i.e., technological and social differentiation, resource-use intensification, and community size) as well as a measure of kin intensity predicted researcher-coded evidence for different punishment types. We found greater evidence for 3PP than 2PP. At the society level, 3PP and 2PP were present in 92% and 79% of societies, respectively, while at the coding level, 3PP and 2PP appeared in 32% and 5% of texts, respectively. Our predictive models revealed that 2PP was negatively associated with all three complexity measures but showed no association with kinship intensity. Generalized 3PP was positively associated with technological and social differentiation, whereas 3PP on behalf of kin was positively associated with kinship intensity. These findings shed light on the socioecological drivers of punishment diversity and support theories linking generalized third-party punishment with technological and social differentiation and punishment on behalf of kin with kinship intensity.