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A comment on Why Punish?. Parent comment

Re:Why Punish? by davidgay on Saturday July 30, 2022 @05:08PM (#32290349)
> There was a study I read over the last year, maybe it was posted on here, that said we mostly seek revenge out of spite not deterrence.

It's easy to imagine that it's personally for spite, but evolutionarily for deterrence (i.e., spite is an evolutionarily effective way to encode deterrence).

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Re:Why Punish? by jimkleiber on Saturday July 30, 2022 @05:50PM (#32290710)
Ah, I found the link, "Punishment isn’t about the common good: it’s about spite" on Aeon [0]. The author doesn't state definitively (in the article at least) that punishment is about spite, but rather seems to introduce that it's likely that it is. I haven't read the linked studies yet but hope to.

[0]: https://aeon.co/ideas/punishment-isnt-about-the-common-good-...

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