Human punishment is not primarily motivated by inequality

Marczyk, Jesse

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0171298

Cited by 9 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…Despite lack of interest in seeking revenge, participants punishing transgressors by withdrawing from the relationship is a subtle form of vengeance (Bone & Raihani, 2015). Punishment also allows victims to restore equity in a relationship that has been imbalanced by a transgression (Marczyk, 2017).…”

Section: Feeling the Need To Sever Ties With The Transgressormentioning

confidence: 99%

Examining the lived experience of holding grudges.

Monsjou¹,

Struthers²,

Fergus³

et al. 2023

Qualitative Psychology

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People often hold grudges in response to being wronged by others, but the meaning and aspects of holding grudges remain unclear, as do the theories about how, why, and when they are held. To develop a more comprehensive understanding of what it means to hold a grudge, we conducted 20 semi-structured interviews designed to uncover the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that are essential to holding a grudge. Our sample consisted of participants who were primarily college aged and women, who were recruited from a North American University and were ethnically diverse. After transcribing the interviews, we conducted a thematic analysis to identify common themes from basic level codes, based on participants' own words, and higher-order themes synthesizing and categorizing the lower-order codes and themes. We found six underlying components of holding a grudge: Need for validation, moral superiority, inability to let go, latency (i.e., existing but not manifest), severing ties, and expectations of the future. We also determined that holding a grudge is a cyclical process characterized by persistent negative affect and intrusive thoughts that interfere with one's quality of life. Over time the intensity of these thoughts and emotions abates, leaving individuals in a state of passive acceptance, in which the negativity is lurking in the back of their minds waiting to be summoned when needed. Based on the results, we define holding a grudge as sustained feelings of hurt and anger that dissipate over time but are easily reignited.

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Section: Feeling the Need To Sever Ties With The Transgressormentioning

confidence: 99%

Examining the lived experience of holding grudges.

Monsjou¹,

Struthers²,

Fergus³

et al. 2023

Qualitative Psychology

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“…However, recent work has cast some doubt on these conclusions. In a recent study, participants played a version of the two-person theft game with three conditions in which they always assumed the role of responder (Marczyk, 2017). The partner either took 20 points from the punisher (Take condition), destroyed 20 of the punisher's points (Destruction condition), or added 20 points to their own score (Augmentation condition).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Before ruling out the role of inequity aversion in motivating punishment in the absence of losses, it is important to note that the low levels of punishment in the Augmentation condition in Marczyk (2017) may have resulted from the design of the Augmentation condition. In this study's Augmentation condition, the actor was afforded the opportunity to add 20 points to their own endowment, resulting in disadvantageous inequity for responders.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Punishment is strongly motivated by revenge and weakly motivated by inequity aversion

Deutchman

Bračič

Raihani

et al. 2021

Evolution and Human Behavior

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There are two broad functional explanations for second-party punishment: fitness-leveling and deterrence. The former suggests that people punish to reduce fitness differences, while the latter suggests that people punish in order to reciprocate losses and deter others from inflicting losses on them in the future. We explore the relative roles of these motivations using a pre-registered, two-player experiment with 2,426 US participants from Amazon Mechanical Turk. Participants played as the "responder" and were assigned to either a Take or Augment condition. In the Take condition, the "partner" could steal money from the responder's bonus or do nothing. In the Augment condition, the partner could augment the responder's bonus by giving them money at no cost to themselves or do nothing. We also manipulated the responders' starting endowments, such that after the partner's decision, responders experienced different payoff outcomes: advantageous inequity, equality, or varying degrees of disadvantageous inequity. Responders then decided whether to pay a cost to punish the partner. Punishment was clearly influenced by theft and was most frequent when theft resulted in disadvantageous inequity. However, people also punished in the absence of theft, particularly when confronted with disadvantageous inequity. While the effect of inequity on punishment was small, our results suggest that punishment is motivated by more than just the desire to reciprocate losses. These findings highlight the multiple motivations undergirding punishment and bear directly on functional explanations for the existence of punishment in human societies.

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“…Like in prior studies, the competition was characterized by a negatively interdependent relationship. Such competitive relations have been found to predict punishment better than focusing on losses without competition (Marczyk, 2017; Raihani & McAuliffe, 2012).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Importance of Unfair Intentions and Outcome Inequality for Punishment by Third Parties and Victims

Hechler

Kessler

2022

Zeitschrift für Psychologie

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Abstract. Retributive theories predominantly focus on third party’s motives for punishment, which are rather affected by the offender’s malicious intentions than the actual outcome of the offense. However, victims experience an offense from a different perspective. The value/status approach argues that an offense has two facets that produce different threats: the intentional violation of values and status imbalance between offender and victims. We suggested that third parties and victims punish unfair intentions, whereas victims also punish because of the outcome inequality. In the present study, we orthogonally crossed the factors offender’s intention with the actual outcome and perspective of punisher (third-party versus victim). Results show that victims punish harsher than third parties. However, there are no qualitative differences of third-party punishment and punishment by victims. Rather, both punish malicious intentions and outcome inequality. We discuss how the findings relate to retributivism and other psychological theories of punishment.

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Human punishment is not primarily motivated by inequality

Cited by 9 publications

References 22 publications

Examining the lived experience of holding grudges.

Examining the lived experience of holding grudges.

Punishment is strongly motivated by revenge and weakly motivated by inequity aversion

The Importance of Unfair Intentions and Outcome Inequality for Punishment by Third Parties and Victims

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