Punishing Dangerous Outsiders

The second, between-group function of punishment asserts that people are motivated to protect their group from dangerous outsiders. Consistently, people assign severe punishment to offenders belonging to societal groups that are stereotypically associated with crime. Moreover, people are particularly punitive when an out-group offender harms an in-group victim. People are parochial altruists who sacrifice their self-interest to protect their own group, sometimes to the detriment of other groups. I then describe how parochial altruism evolved as a consequence of war and inter-group conflict, and that between-group punishment can function to deter out-groups from committing hostilities. These insights have implications for contemporary jihadi terrorism: suicide bombing essentially is an act of parochial altruism where a terrorist imposes collective punishment on an enemy out-group.