Reinforcement learning of altruistic punishment differs between cultures and across the lifespan.

Publisher: Public Library of Science Country of Publication: United States NLM ID: 101238922 Publication Model: eCollection Cited Medium: Internet ISSN: 1553-7358 (Electronic) Linking ISSN: 1553734X NLM ISO Abbreviation: PLoS Comput Biol Subsets: MEDLINE

Original Publication: San Francisco, CA : Public Library of Science, [2005]-

Altruism* ; Punishment*/psychology; Humans ; Adult ; Male ; Adolescent ; Young Adult ; Female ; Middle Aged ; Child ; Reinforcement, Psychology ; United States ; China ; Cross-Cultural Comparison ; Computational Biology ; Learning/physiology

Altruistic punishment is key to establishing cooperation and maintaining social order, yet its developmental trends across cultures remain unclear. Using computational reinforcement learning models, we provided the first evidence of how social feedback dynamically influences group-biased altruistic punishment across cultures and the lifespan. Study 1 (n = 371) found that Chinese participants exhibited higher learning rates than Americans when socially incentivized to punish unfair allocations. Additionally, Chinese adults showed slower learning and less exploration when punishing ingroups than outgroups, a pattern absent in American counterparts, potentially reflecting a tendency towards ingroup favoritism that may contribute to reinforcing collectivist values. Study 2 (n = 430, aged 12-52) further showed that such ingroup favoritism develops with age. Chinese participants' learning rates for ingroup punishment decreased from adolescence into adulthood, while outgroup rates stayed constant, implying a process of cultural learning. Our findings highlight cultural and age-related variations in altruistic punishment learning, with implications for social reinforcement learning and culturally sensitive educational practices promoting fairness and altruism.
Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
(Copyright: © 2024 Guo et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

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Date Created: 20240711 Date Completed: 20240730 Latest Revision: 20240801

20240801

PMC11288421

10.1371/journal.pcbi.1012274

38990982