The  EVOLUTION  of  MORALITY FRAME 23A   
Previous > MORAL SYSTEMS (SOCIALTY AND COMMUNICATION)

  • Social organisms may enforce cooperation through rewards and punishment.

    Organisms may also actively punish non-cooperators. For example, in a free-ranging (semi-captive) colony of macaques, or rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta), on an island off Puerto Rico, individuals call to the group when they find food. Individuals that fail to call are frequently discovered and, here, actively punished. They are more likely to be bit, hit, chased or rolled. Cheaters ultimately eat less food. There are costs to deception (Hauser 1992). Cooperation enforced through punishment yields strong reciprocity. Such punishment has also been observed in the cooperative breeding of fairy wrens and in the shared nesting of paper wasps (Polistes fuscatus) (Clutton-Brock and Parker 1995). In these cases, interactions at the higher, social level regulate behavior, or stimulus-response patterns, at the individual level.

  • Next

    End

    © 2008 EVOLUTIONofMORALITY.net