Choosy Moral Punishers.docVIP

ChoosyMoralPunishers ChristineClavien1*,ColbyJ.Tanner1,FabriceCle′ment2,MichelChapuisat1 1DepartmentofEcologyandEvolution,UniversityofLausanne,Lausanne,Switzerland,2CognitiveScienceCentre,UniversityofNeucha?tel, Neucha?tel, Switzerland Abstract Thepunishmentofsocialmisconductisapowerfulmechanismforstabilizinghighlevelsofcooperationamongunrelated individuals. It is regularly assumed that humans have a universal disposition to punish social norm violators, which is sometimeslabelled‘‘universalstructureofhumanmorality’’or‘‘pureaversiontosocialbetrayal’’.Herewepresentevidence that,contrarytothishypothesis,thepropensitytopunishamoralnormviolatorvariesamongparticipantswithdifferent careertrajectories.Inanonymousreal-lifeconditions,futureteacherspunishedatalentedbutimmoralyoungviolinist:they votedagainstherinanimportantmusiccompetitionwhentheyhadbeeninformedofherpreviousblatantmisconduct toward fellow violin students. In contrast, future police officers and high school students did not punish. This variation among socio-professional categories indicates that the punishment of norm violators is not entirely explained by an aversiontosocialbetrayal.Wesuggestthatcontextspecificityplaysanimportantroleinnormativebehaviour;peopleseem inclined to enforce social norms only in situations that are familiar, relevant for their social category, and possibly strategicallyadvantageous. Citation:ClavienC,TannerCJ,Cle′ment F,ChapuisatM(2012)ChoosyMoralPunishers.PLoSONE7(6):e39002.doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0039002 Editor:AttilaSzolnoki,HungarianAcademyofSciences,Hungary ReceivedMarch22,2012;AcceptedMay16,2012;PublishedJune13,2012 Copyright: ? 2012 Clavien et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricteduse,distribution,andreproductioninanymedium,providedtheoriginalauthorandsourcearecredited. Funding: This work wasfundedbythe Fondation du450e`me (http://www.unil.ch/450e). ColbyTannerwasfunde