Examining Consequentialist Punishment Motives in One-Shot Social Dilemmas

Abstract

Abstract. We investigated whether consequentialist motives may underlie punishment decisions in single-round (i.e., one-shot) social dilemmas in which there is no prospect of reciprocity. In particular, we used an incentivized public goods game to examine how the prospect of receiving information on the effect of punishment (i.e., information that indicates potential regret and intention for future behavioral change on the part of the transgressor) affects people’s punishment decisions. We also took person-situation interactions into account and studied whether prosocial individuals (i.e., persons high in Honesty-Humility and Social Value Orientation) punish more strongly when they receive consequentialist information. The data did neither reveal the hypothesized effects of information availability on punishment decisions nor were these effects conditional on dispositional prosociality. We discuss potential limitations of these findings as well as open questions for future research.

What Drives Second- and Third-Party Punishment?

“…Importantly, the perspective of the punisher is typically of great relevance in the punishment literature. This also applies to the research presented in this topical issue, as some studies investigated punishment motives in thirdparty punishment (De Cristofaro & Giacomantonio, 2022;Fousiani & Van Prooijen, 2022;Molho et al, 2022;Rehren & Zisman, 2022;Strauß & Bondü, 2022), whereas others tested punishment motives in second-party punishment (Funk & Mischkowski, 2022;Nockur et al, 2022) or even compared the two perspectives as a potential boundary condition (Aharoni et al, 2022;Hechler & Kessler, 2022).…”

“…The Bigger Picture: Conceptual Replications of the "Intuitive Retributivism" Hypothesis Some of the studies presented here closely followed or adapted procedures that were used in prior research to test the "intuitive retributivism" hypothesis (e.g., Molho et al, 2022;Rehren & Zisman, 2022), while others focused on replicating the "intuitive retributivism" hypothesis from a more theoretical perspective and tested the hypothesis without referring to methods from a specific original study (e.g., Funk & Mischkowski, 2022;Hechler & Kessler, 2022). In the latter case, it is more challenging to describe to what extent the new study can be considered a "conceptual replication".…”

“…Most studies used the “indirect approach” (see above): they systematically varied motive-congruent information about a misbehavior and then tested the effect of this variation on people’s punishment tendencies or behavior (Aharoni et al, 2022; De Cristofaro & Giacomantonio, 2022; Hechler & Kessler, 2022; Molho et al, 2022; Nockur et al, 2022). One study investigated whether people’s prospect of receiving information about the effect of their punishment on offenders changed their punishment decisions (Funk & Mischkowski, 2022). Moreover, while some of these experiments manipulated information in vignettes and measured punishment tendencies or suggestions (Aharoni et al, 2022; De Cristofaro & Giacomantonio, 2022; Molho et al, 2022), others used economic games and, thus, measured actual (incentivized) punishment behavior (Funk & Mischkowski, 2022; Hechler & Kessler, 2022; Nockur et al, 2022).…”

“…One study investigated whether people’s prospect of receiving information about the effect of their punishment on offenders changed their punishment decisions (Funk & Mischkowski, 2022). Moreover, while some of these experiments manipulated information in vignettes and measured punishment tendencies or suggestions (Aharoni et al, 2022; De Cristofaro & Giacomantonio, 2022; Molho et al, 2022), others used economic games and, thus, measured actual (incentivized) punishment behavior (Funk & Mischkowski, 2022; Hechler & Kessler, 2022; Nockur et al, 2022). Some studies did not measure punishment tendencies (or behavior) as a proxy for individuals’ punishment motives but investigated their information search behavior (Rehren & Zisman, 2022), their support for different punishment reactions (Strauß & Bondü, 2022), or direct self-reported support for various punishment motives (Fousiani & Van Prooijen, 2022).…”

“…Note that one study in this topical issue could not be considered for the meta-analysis Funk and Mischkowski (2022). designed a study in which the "intuitive retributivism" hypothesis was the null hypothesis, testing whether experimental manipulation of the availability of information on the consequences of one's punishment changes people's punishment behavior.…”