Collective Punishment

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Collective punishment is the punishment of a group of people for the crime(s) of a few or even of one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_punishment

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Goals of Collective Punishment

The idea of collective punishment is to create an incentive for groups to regulate other group member's behavior. In effect, collective punishment is an attempt to induce a new social norm within an outgroup.

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Inducing a Norm vs. Inducing Rebellion

There are cases where collective punishment is as likely to create rebellion as it is to successfully induce a new social norm. This has been shown in prisoner's dillema games (Heckathorn, American Journal of Sociology, 1988) where rebellion vs. cooperation has been shown to be related to:

  • The ability of the punishing agent to monitor compliance.
  • The severity of sanctions of the punishing agent.
  • The vulnerability of the punishing agent.
  • The punished group's size.
  • The degree of intragroup control within the punished group.
  • The proportion of potential violators in the punished group.
  • The costliness of rebellion to the punished group.

In another experiment by Decker, Stiehler, and Strobel 2003, support for collective punishment was examined within the context of a public goods game. These studies were done on collective punishment within an ingroup. Perhaps the most generalizable finding was that "When designing punishment rules, the ability to suppress exaggerated emotional punishment (punishment due to outrage/anger) is at least as important as providing a sufficient punishment threat."

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