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Many people voluntarily incur costs to punish violations of social norms. Evolutionary models and empirical evidence indicate that such altruistic punishment has been a decisive force in the evolution of human cooperation. We used H2 15O positron emission tomography to examine the neural basis for altruistic punishment of defectors in an economic exchange. Subjects could punish defection either symbolically or effectively. Symbolic punishment did not reduce the defector's economic payoff, whereas effective punishment did reduce the payoff. We scanned the subjects' brains while they learned about the defector's abuse of trust and determined the punishment. Effective punishment, as compared with symbolic punishment, activated the dorsal striatum, which has been implicated in the processing of rewards that accrue as a result of goal-directed actions. Moreover, subjects with stronger activations in the dorsal striatum were willing to incur greater costs in order to punish. Our findings support the hypothesis that people derive satisfaction from punishing norm violations and that the activation in the dorsal striatum reflects the anticipated satisfaction from punishing defectors.

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Conclusions. Our study is part of recent attempts in "neuroeconomics" and the "cognitive neuroscience of social behavior" to understand the social brain and the associated moral emotions (37–44). However, this study sought to identify the neural basis of the altruistic punishment of defectors. The ability to develop social norms that apply to large groups of genetically unrelated individuals and to enforce these norms through altruistic sanctions is one of the distinguishing characteristics of the human species. Altruistic punishment is probably a key element in explaining the unprecedented level of cooperation in human societies (1–3). We hypothesize that altruistic punishment provides relief or satisfaction to the punisher and activates, therefore, reward-related brain regions. Our design generates five contrasts in which this hypothesis can be tested, and the anterior dorsal striatum is activated in all five contrasts, which suggests that the caudate plays a decisive role in altruistic punishment. Caudate activation is particularly interesting because this brain region has been implicated in making decisions or taking actions that are motivated by anticipated rewards (17–20). The prominent role of the caudate in altruistic punishment is further supported by the fact that those subjects who exhibit stronger caudate activation spend more money on punishing defectors. Moreover, our results also shed light on the reasons behind this correlation. Subjects who exhibit higher caudate activation at the maximal level of punishment if punishment is costless for them also spend more resources on punishment if punishment becomes costly. Thus, high caudate activation seems to be responsible for a high willingness to punish, which suggests that caudate activation reflects the anticipated satisfaction from punishing defectors. Our results therefore support recently developed social preference models (6–8), which assume that people have a preference for punishing norm violations, and illuminate the proximate mechanism behind evolutionary models of altruistic punishment.

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