Children and chimpanzees pay to punish antisocial behaviour

Six-year-old children and chimpanzees derive pleasure from watching others being punished for antisocial behaviour and are prepared to pay to see it, according to new UCL research. Until now, it has been unclear when we develop the impulse to penalise uncooperative behaviour and whether this is an exclusively human feature. It is thought that such behaviour may be fundamental to being human and is a useful mechanism for living amicably in communities. The study, published in the journal  Nature Human Behaviour by researchers from UCL and the Max Planck Institute, Leiden University, University of Barcelona and University of St Andrews, discovered that even six-year-old children feel the need to reprimand antisocial behaviour, and that they are willing to take risks and make an effort to be present when the 'guilty' one is punished. "We cannot definitely say that the children and chimpanzees felt spite. However, their behaviour is a clear sign that six-year-old children as well as chimpanzees are eager to observe how uncooperative members of their community are punished," said Dr Nikolaus Steinbeis, co-author of the study (UCL Psychology & Language Sciences and Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences). Scientists studied the behaviour of 65 children aged between four and six years old during a puppet show where they interacted with friendly and antisocial puppets.