RE: Psychology Addict # 58 | Punishment – An Overview Through the Lens of Psychology.
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B.F. Sinners work was interesting. He basically laid a foundation for understanding human behavior along with Pavlov and a few others. What you said about socialization and the individual adopting the norms of society into their self concept was very interesting. I don't know if I've ever heard that before but it makes a lot of sense to me. I also liked the part about punishments being a signal to people who abide by the rules. I found that part really interesting as well.
I have read a few studies on people punishing others at a cost to themselves. One study demonstrated that participants often turn down an opportunity for a monetary reward in order to stop a fellow participant, who acted unfairly, from receiving their own monetary reward. What was interesting about that study was that individuals who scored higher on the psychopathy scale often accepted the rewards regardless of how the other participant acted. They didnt seem to care that the other participant acted unfairly as long as they themselves got a reward. It was an interesting study.
Nice conclusion to your article. Reinforcing good behavior is far more important then punishing bad behavior as it provides a lot more information to the individual in terms of morals, ethics, societal norms...etc. Nice work as usual!
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Hello @leaky20 😊
It is always wonderful to hear that somehow my writings have provided you with some new info and delivered an interesting read to you :) To this day the works of Skinner (in particular) and other early behaviorists still fascinate me.
Oh! What a most incredible find about individuals presenting higher scores on the psychopathy scales! Incredible, what it says about their judgement of fairness and cooperation, or really, what it says about their concern toward the group as a whole. Amazing! Thank you for sharing this info here with me :) I am writing it down to look into it whenever I have a free minute.
You guys have a great afternoon ahead!
I wish you two all the best always ...
:)
I just realized that I did a really poor job explaining he study I'm talking about. Lol. I was referring to the study known as the "ultimatum game." In it, two people have to split a sum of money and one participant makes an offer how the money will be split. If the second participant accepts the offer both recieve the amount of money provided by the original offer. If the offer is rejected then neither participant receives anything. Both participants are aware of the terms before the offer is made. In most cases participants behave fairly making offers at 40-50% split and generally, offers below 30% are rejected. Despite the fact that rejecting the offer is actually an irrational behavior, participants generally will take the punishment of receiving nothing in order to punish the other person for being unfair. In the case of psychopaths, they often accept unfair distributions, even very unfair ones. These participants generally saw any offer as a win for them - "money in their pocket."
Moral of the story: It's more rational to take the money regardless of the fairness of the offer but it's not socially cooperative, so the average person will typically reject an unfair distribution.
The study reminded me of your article because of the social cooperation aspect of it and the accepting punishment in order to punish others aspect.
Enjoy the rest of your day as well :)
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Oh, I see ... Thank you for taking the time to explain things further @leaky20 :)