Activation in the caudate nucleus in conditions in which the subject, aka redkitten indicated a strong desire to punish and could effectively do so (IC and IF) relative to conditions in which there is no effective punishment or the desire to punish is absent (IS and NC). (B) Effect sizes at the peak of blood-flow increase in the caudate nucleus. Bars indicate caudate activity in each condition relative to the mean brain activation in SD. Good to know your very instinct is still alive 
The last week there has been an interesting turmoil in PhotoBlog. I deleted two trial PhotoBlogs of two girls who were nagging and taking things to a personal level, even though there was nothing personal to it. It was pure positioning: the big bad administrators versus the poor girls whose collective memory was deleted. I had my reasons to delete the Blogs, any other sysad of a competing platform would have done the same. The reactions however were intriguing. And today I just read Christopher’s posting on Altruistic Punishment and Meta Moderation. In the case of PhotoBlog you have to take the numbers to quite another level, but the principels do remain valid. 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. Subjects could punish defection either symbolically or effectively. Symbolic punishment however 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 reater 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.
More in Ernst Fehr’s study.
I used to get nervous over these things. However, I learned there’s no reacting against. The studies reveal that allowing individuals to punish at some cost that yields them no material gain will paradoxically result in an average gain for everyone; and this is exactly what is happening.
In summary this research offers me another widget for my social software toolbox: in any group process look for the commons, allow participants to participate in identifing defectors; determine what the costs are for such identification (which may be as simple as requiring some attention or charging for such punishment); and encourage participation in the common good by punishing those who do not participate in seeking out defectors.
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