The role of learning in punishment, prosociality, and human uniqueness

any sort of punishment could motivate any sort of prosocial behavior. In reality, punishment must conform itself to the circumscribed ability of organisms to learn. There is one species with a substantially expanded learning abilities: humans. It is no accident, therefore, that we also exhibit a uniquely flexible and productive prosocial behavior. To the extent that punishment (and also reciprocity and reward) depend on general learning mechanisms to motivate prosocial action, humans’ uniquely powerful capacities in learning, reasoning and behavioral choice stand to vastly expand their range of prosocial behavior beyond non-human animals’. I conclude by considering an irony of the human situation: Our punitive instincts (and possibility our instincts for reciprocity and reward) may not have “caught up” with our new capacities for learning, reasoning and deciding. In some respects, the functional design of human punishment may still be adapted to the substantially more limited minds of our non-human ancestors. 2. Specialized versus general mechanisms in