Word: punishable
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...1950s, cleaner wrasses have provided biologists with a delightful example of cooperation in nature. But now an international team of scientists has observed another unusual trait in the fish, one that may shed light on higher social animals, including humans. The wrasses, it appears, know how to punish one another...
...researchers believe the results are relevant to humans because they may offer clues to how humans evolved their own uniquely complex system of punishment. Despite the centrality of the concept of punishment to human society, evolutionary biologists are stumped as to what selective pressure would have led us to punish people who have cheated or harmed not the person who does the punishing but a third party - even if that party is not a genetic relation. Some biologists suggest that punishers benefit from a boost in social status and are thus more attractive as mates...
...cleaner fish may have another rationale - one that they also might share with us. The male cleaners probably punish females for biting the client because the male is a secondary victim - the client fish often swims away after being nibbled by the female, and the male wrasse loses his chance for lunch. This rationale, over the course of evolutionary eras, could have led to human society's more diffuse arrangements for punishment. "What we might be seeing is the origin of third-party punishment in human evolutionary history," Bshary says. The line connecting the male wrasse to our criminal courts...
Research shows that in the long term, the pleasure of victory is a better incentive than the agony of defeat. "Punishment is a poor motivator," says Hester. "It sets people up for failure. If all you do is punish yourself for failure, you won't stay motivated to change for very long...
...fact, Yemen itself offered one successful approach to the problem Obama now faces. Ever since a pair of al-Qaeda suicide bombers in a skiff attacked the USS Cole in Yemen's Aden harbor in 2000 and killed 17 U.S. sailors, Washington had been looking to punish the ringleader of the attack, Qaed Sinan Harithi. More than two years later, after learning he would be traveling across the country in an SUV, the U.S. launched a Predator drone. Once in the open countryside, safely away from any civilians, the drone fired a Hellfire missile into the vehicle, instantly dispatching Harithi...