What drives destruction? The role of expected retaliation on antisocial behavior

The study of antisocial preference is just beginning compared to prosocial preference and prosocial behaviors. Researchers have identified experimental evidence for antisocial preferences in economic destruction games. In this paper, the authors develop a basic utility model to demonstrate antisocial preferences in theory and study the robustness of this phenomenon. The authors design two levels of information-hiding decision-making environments based on the two-party experiment of “joy-of-destruction” and discuss the initial distribution of antisocial preferences and the role of information disclosure in the process of antisocial behavior. The results indicate that destruction frequency and degree are rarely observed under complete information conditions. However, after adding random destruction in the experiment, the destruction behavior of subjects can be hidden to a certain extent, while both the frequency and degree of destruction significantly improve. When the probability distribution of random destruction is hidden, it could induce a higher degree of destruction. The authors conclude that antisocial preferences exist stably but are significantly inhibited by expected retaliation.