Why do inequality and deprivation produce high crime and low trust?

Abstract Humans sometimes cooperate to mutual advantage, and sometimes exploit one another. In industrialised societies, the prevalence of exploitation, in the form of crime, is related to the distribution of economic resources: more unequal societies tend to have higher crime, as well as lower soci...

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Autores principales:	Benoît De Courson, Daniel Nettle
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN
Publicado:	Nature Portfolio 2021
Materias:	Medicine R Science Q
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/5a09f5a564ee45d7879321739e488b39
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spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:5a09f5a564ee45d7879321739e488b392021-12-02T11:50:31ZWhy do inequality and deprivation produce high crime and low trust?10.1038/s41598-020-80897-82045-2322https://doaj.org/article/5a09f5a564ee45d7879321739e488b392021-01-01T00:00:00Zhttps://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-80897-8https://doaj.org/toc/2045-2322Abstract Humans sometimes cooperate to mutual advantage, and sometimes exploit one another. In industrialised societies, the prevalence of exploitation, in the form of crime, is related to the distribution of economic resources: more unequal societies tend to have higher crime, as well as lower social trust. We created a model of cooperation and exploitation to explore why this should be. Distinctively, our model features a desperation threshold, a level of resources below which it is extremely damaging to fall. Agents do not belong to fixed types, but condition their behaviour on their current resource level and the behaviour in the population around them. We show that the optimal action for individuals who are close to the desperation threshold is to exploit others. This remains true even in the presence of severe and probable punishment for exploitation, since successful exploitation is the quickest route out of desperation, whereas being punished does not make already desperate states much worse. Simulated populations with a sufficiently unequal distribution of resources rapidly evolve an equilibrium of low trust and zero cooperation: desperate individuals try to exploit, and non-desperate individuals avoid interaction altogether. Making the distribution of resources more equal or increasing social mobility is generally effective in producing a high cooperation, high trust equilibrium; increasing punishment severity is not.Benoît De CoursonDaniel NettleNature PortfolioarticleMedicineRScienceQENScientific Reports, Vol 11, Iss 1, Pp 1-11 (2021)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN
topic	Medicine R Science Q
spellingShingle	Medicine R Science Q Benoît De Courson Daniel Nettle Why do inequality and deprivation produce high crime and low trust?
description	Abstract Humans sometimes cooperate to mutual advantage, and sometimes exploit one another. In industrialised societies, the prevalence of exploitation, in the form of crime, is related to the distribution of economic resources: more unequal societies tend to have higher crime, as well as lower social trust. We created a model of cooperation and exploitation to explore why this should be. Distinctively, our model features a desperation threshold, a level of resources below which it is extremely damaging to fall. Agents do not belong to fixed types, but condition their behaviour on their current resource level and the behaviour in the population around them. We show that the optimal action for individuals who are close to the desperation threshold is to exploit others. This remains true even in the presence of severe and probable punishment for exploitation, since successful exploitation is the quickest route out of desperation, whereas being punished does not make already desperate states much worse. Simulated populations with a sufficiently unequal distribution of resources rapidly evolve an equilibrium of low trust and zero cooperation: desperate individuals try to exploit, and non-desperate individuals avoid interaction altogether. Making the distribution of resources more equal or increasing social mobility is generally effective in producing a high cooperation, high trust equilibrium; increasing punishment severity is not.
format	article
author	Benoît De Courson Daniel Nettle
author_facet	Benoît De Courson Daniel Nettle
author_sort	Benoît De Courson
title	Why do inequality and deprivation produce high crime and low trust?
title_short	Why do inequality and deprivation produce high crime and low trust?
title_full	Why do inequality and deprivation produce high crime and low trust?
title_fullStr	Why do inequality and deprivation produce high crime and low trust?
title_full_unstemmed	Why do inequality and deprivation produce high crime and low trust?
title_sort	why do inequality and deprivation produce high crime and low trust?
publisher	Nature Portfolio
publishDate	2021
url	https://doaj.org/article/5a09f5a564ee45d7879321739e488b39
work_keys_str_mv	AT benoitdecourson whydoinequalityanddeprivationproducehighcrimeandlowtrust AT danielnettle whydoinequalityanddeprivationproducehighcrimeandlowtrust
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Why do inequality and deprivation produce high crime and low trust?

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