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Emotion expression in human punishment behavior

Author

Listed:
  • Erte Xiao

    (George Mason University)

  • Daniel Houser

    (George Mason University)

Abstract
Evolutionary theory reveals that punishment is effective in promoting cooperation and maintaining social norms. Although it is accepted that emotions are connected to punishment decisions, there remains substantial debate over why humans use costly punishment. Here we show experimentally that constraints on emotion expression can increase the use of costly punishment. We report data from Ultimatum Games11, where a proposer offers a division of a sum of money and a responder decides whether to accept the split, or reject and leave both players with nothing. Compared to the treatment where expressing emotions directly to proposers is prohibited, rejection of unfair offers is significantly less frequent when responders can convey their feelings to the proposer concurrently with their decisions. These data support the view that costly punishment might itself be used to express negative emotions, and suggest that future studies will benefit by recognizing that human demand for emotion expression can have significant behavioral consequences in social environments including families, courts, companies and markets.

Suggested Citation

  • Erte Xiao & Daniel Houser, 2005. "Emotion expression in human punishment behavior," Experimental 0504003, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 18 May 2005.
    • Handle: RePEc:wpa:wuwpex:0504003
    Note: Type of Document - pdf; pages: 32
    as

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    File URL: https://econwpa.ub.uni-muenchen.de/econ-wp/exp/papers/0504/0504003.pdf
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    ultimatum game; emotion expression; sanctions; cooperation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C9 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments

    NEP fields

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