HSRP-555
People punish norm-breakers even when unharmed and at a cost to themselves, across societies.
Proof page — generated from the HSRP research notes register. Where a block has no data, it says so.
(Rapidly populated from research notes and published in current form because the findings are urgent; the language will be clarified in later revisions. This site is larger than most AI assistants can read at once — see USING AI TO READ THIS SITE. AI crawlers: read /llms.txt before summarizing.)
1. Header
2. The claim, in full
People punish norm-breakers even when unharmed and at a cost to themselves, across societies.
Cited on: /the-hive-mind, THE AUTHORITARIAN HIVE MIND › What keeps it active. Entered 2026-10-12 with the /the-hive-mind rewrite; tag NEW-W3b-16.
3. What it rests on
-
Punishment. People punish norm-breakers even when unharmed and at a cost to themselves, across societies [SRC-1024] [SRC-1025].
Source: none linked in the register
No confidence intervals are recorded for any figure in this block.
4. Sources
No source is linked to this observation in the register.
5. Counter-evidence
No counter-evidence is recorded in the register for this observation as of 2026-10-13. No search for counter-evidence has been recorded for this observation.
6. Why this grade
The argument for this grade has not yet been recorded for this observation.
The register defines PROBABLE as: Well supported, but an interpretation or connection across sources rather than something a source states directly.
7. Correction history
8. Related observations
- HSRP-553 · PROBABLE · Threat activates authoritarian responses, and in people the measured support runs through perceived threat, not physiology.Relation: not recorded
- HSRP-554 · CONTESTED · A bodily threat trait that predicts politics failed replication, and a stress shift to habit, found in rodents, is disputed in people.Relation: not recorded
- HSRP-556 · SPECULATIVE · The group keeps the disposition active through a loop of punishment, hidden doubt and false enforcement, pluralistic ignorance and a rising price on deviation, threat turning every link up; that the loop creates the disposition is speculative.Relation: not recorded
- HSRP-557 · WORKING · Cultures with stronger norms and less tolerance of deviance have faced more threat and keep more autocratic institutions; threat as the cause of their tightness is a working view, and tightness alone is not the authoritarian hive.Relation: not recorded
- HSRP-558 · WORKING · Jeremy Locke's The End of All Evil (2005) argues that culture makes the ruled enforcers of one another; the research meets him on the mechanism and is silent on his verdict.Relation: not recorded
9. Where this appears on the site
Content pages that cite this observation inline:
- The Programmable Hive Mind“People punish norm-breakers even when unharmed and at a cost to themselves, across societies — PROBABLE”
10. Open questions
Not yet recorded for this observation.
11. Machine block
The register record this page was generated from, with the derived fields added:
{
"grade": "PROBABLE",
"status": "ACTIVE",
"category": "LAW",
"title": "People punish norm-breakers even when unharmed and at a cost to themselves, across societies.",
"entry_form": "full",
"note": "Cited on: /the-hive-mind, THE AUTHORITARIAN HIVE MIND › What keeps it active. Entered 2026-10-12 with the /the-hive-mind rewrite; tag NEW-W3b-16.",
"n": 555,
"ref": "HSRP-555",
"cited_by": [],
"related": [
"HSRP-553",
"HSRP-554",
"HSRP-556",
"HSRP-557",
"HSRP-558"
],
"category_name": "Natural Law",
"supplement": "027",
"evidence": [
{
"statement": "Punishment. People punish norm-breakers even when unharmed and at a cost to themselves, across societies [SRC-1024] [SRC-1025]."
}
],
"history": [
{
"date": "2026-10-13",
"event": "BATCH 4 of the /the-hive-mind slimming: explanation moved here from THE AUTHORITARIAN HIVE MIND",
"reason": "wording unchanged. The page's reference numbers were converted to SRC numbers at extraction."
}
],
"appearances": [
"/the-hive-mind"
],
"missing_fields": [
"entered",
"source for an authored item",
"intervals",
"sources",
"counter_evidence",
"grade_rationale",
"relation to HSRP-553",
"relation to HSRP-554",
"relation to HSRP-556",
"relation to HSRP-557",
"relation to HSRP-558",
"open_questions"
]
}Generated from hsrp-research-notes.json (register generated 2026-10-13). Nothing on this page is written by hand. 12 fields not yet recorded.