[psych] Fwd: Depressed caregivers; Punishment and Cooperation
Two articles, both via physorg_med:
Depressed caregivers hostile, not warm, to children:This investigation used data from 100 low-income families whose children were prescribed medicine for asthma. Family members were videotaped in the clinic while completing structured tasks and caregivers were later rated on warmth, hostility, and disciplinary skill. Researchers rated each task separately.
Caregivers with higher levels of depressive symptoms exhibited lower levels of warmth and higher levels of hostility during both loss and conflict tasks. In the loss task, the child was asked to share with family members his/her experience of a previously identified sad event, such as a death or a injury. In the conflict task, parent and child were asked to resolve a disagreement previously identified by each of them in separate interviews, such as a disagreement about chores, sibling conflict, or privileges.
As expected, caregivers tended to show more hostility and less warmth during the conflict task than during the preceding loss task. However, caregivers with moderate/severe depressive symptoms showed a greater rise in hostility from the loss to the conflict task than caregivers with minimal/mild depressive symptoms.
By including a task designed to elicit warmth, the study allowed for a more valid exploration of how caregivers respond to children's need for support and nurturance, expanding upon traditional procedures for collecting observational data. The study provides a better test of models for understanding how parenting behaviors associated with caregiver depression may lead to child maladjustment.
Punishment does not earn rewards or cooperation, study finds: The group, led by Martin A. Nowak of Harvard's Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, Department of Mathematics, and Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, examined cooperation among subjects playing a modified version of the Prisoner's Dilemma. This game captures the fundamental tension between the interests of the individual and the group, and is the classic paradigm for cooperation. The study found that the use of punitive behavior correlates strongly with reduced individual payoff, and bestows no benefit on the group as a whole.
"Put simply, winners don't punish," says co-author David G. Rand of Harvard's Program for Evolutionary Dynamics and Department of Systems Biology. "Punishment can lead to a downward spiral of retaliation, with destructive outcomes for everybody involved. The people with the highest total payoffs do not use costly punishment."
"Costly punishment," the type of punitive behavior studied by Nowak and his colleagues, refers to situations where a punisher is willing to incur a cost in order to penalize someone else. [...]
Dreber, Rand, Nowak, and Drew Fudenberg of Harvard's Department of Economics recruited 104 Boston-area college students to participate in a computer-based Prisoner's Dilemma game that was extended to include costly punishment alongside the usual options of cooperation and defection. Pairs of students played the game repeatedly so the interaction between costly punishment and reciprocity could be assessed.
The result: There is a strong negative correlation between individual payoff and the use of costly punishment. The five top-ranked players never used costly punishment, while players who earned the lowest payoffs tended to punish most often. Winners used a tit-for-tat like strategy while losers used costly punishment. Furthermore, costly punishment did not increase the average payoff of the group. [...]
Depressed caregivers hostile, not warm, to children:This investigation used data from 100 low-income families whose children were prescribed medicine for asthma. Family members were videotaped in the clinic while completing structured tasks and caregivers were later rated on warmth, hostility, and disciplinary skill. Researchers rated each task separately.
Caregivers with higher levels of depressive symptoms exhibited lower levels of warmth and higher levels of hostility during both loss and conflict tasks. In the loss task, the child was asked to share with family members his/her experience of a previously identified sad event, such as a death or a injury. In the conflict task, parent and child were asked to resolve a disagreement previously identified by each of them in separate interviews, such as a disagreement about chores, sibling conflict, or privileges.
As expected, caregivers tended to show more hostility and less warmth during the conflict task than during the preceding loss task. However, caregivers with moderate/severe depressive symptoms showed a greater rise in hostility from the loss to the conflict task than caregivers with minimal/mild depressive symptoms.
By including a task designed to elicit warmth, the study allowed for a more valid exploration of how caregivers respond to children's need for support and nurturance, expanding upon traditional procedures for collecting observational data. The study provides a better test of models for understanding how parenting behaviors associated with caregiver depression may lead to child maladjustment.
Punishment does not earn rewards or cooperation, study finds: The group, led by Martin A. Nowak of Harvard's Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, Department of Mathematics, and Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, examined cooperation among subjects playing a modified version of the Prisoner's Dilemma. This game captures the fundamental tension between the interests of the individual and the group, and is the classic paradigm for cooperation. The study found that the use of punitive behavior correlates strongly with reduced individual payoff, and bestows no benefit on the group as a whole.
"Put simply, winners don't punish," says co-author David G. Rand of Harvard's Program for Evolutionary Dynamics and Department of Systems Biology. "Punishment can lead to a downward spiral of retaliation, with destructive outcomes for everybody involved. The people with the highest total payoffs do not use costly punishment."
"Costly punishment," the type of punitive behavior studied by Nowak and his colleagues, refers to situations where a punisher is willing to incur a cost in order to penalize someone else. [...]
Dreber, Rand, Nowak, and Drew Fudenberg of Harvard's Department of Economics recruited 104 Boston-area college students to participate in a computer-based Prisoner's Dilemma game that was extended to include costly punishment alongside the usual options of cooperation and defection. Pairs of students played the game repeatedly so the interaction between costly punishment and reciprocity could be assessed.
The result: There is a strong negative correlation between individual payoff and the use of costly punishment. The five top-ranked players never used costly punishment, while players who earned the lowest payoffs tended to punish most often. Winners used a tit-for-tat like strategy while losers used costly punishment. Furthermore, costly punishment did not increase the average payoff of the group. [...]