Deutchman, P;
Aellen, M;
Bogese, M;
Bshary, R;
Drayton, L;
Gil, D;
Martin, J;
... McAuliffe, K; + view all
(2023)
Punishment is sensitive to outside options in humans but not in cleaner fish (Labroides dimidiatus).
Animal Behaviour
, 205
pp. 15-33.
10.1016/j.anbehav.2023.08.014.
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Abstract
Across human and animal societies, punishment is used as a means of responding to cheating and modifying the behaviour of others. A growing body of work shows that human punishment decisions involve representing both the outcomes of transgressions as well as whether a transgressor chose to do wrong. An important question in comparative cognition is whether nonhuman animals demonstrate a similar sensitivity to choice when punishing. Understanding whether and to what extent animals integrate information about choice into their punishment decisions can shed light on the selective pressures and cognitive mechanisms that shape punishment. Here we explore this question by comparing punishment in cooperative pairs of reef-dwelling cleaner wrasses, Labroides dimidiatus, and humans, Homo sapiens. In study 1, we investigate whether punishment in adult male cleaners is influenced by whether females had a choice to cheat. In study 2, we ask the same question of human adults, using a novel task inspired by the cooperative interactions between pairs of cleaners and their client fish. Our results support previous work finding that punishment of cheating in humans is sensitive to whether transgressors chose to cheat: they punished more when the alternative option was cooperation. However, we did not find a similar sensitivity to alternative options in cleaners. Our results provide a direct comparison of the role of alternative options in punishment decisions in humans and a distantly related cooperative species. We suggest that important cognitive constraints may be in place that limit cleaners’ ability to simultaneously represent both the choice a transgressor makes as well as the choices they could have made.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Punishment is sensitive to outside options in humans but not in cleaner fish (Labroides dimidiatus) |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1016/j.anbehav.2023.08.014 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2023.08.014 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions. |
| Keywords: | choice, cleaner fish, comparative cognition, cooperation, counterfactual thinking, Labroides dimidiatus, punishment |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences > Experimental Psychology |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10181071 |
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