Motives for punishing powerful vs. prestigious offenders: The moderating role of group identity

Abstract

Status can be seen as power over valued resources or as prestige that lies in the eyes of the beholder. In the present research, we examine how power versus prestige influence observers' punishing motives. Possession of power implies the capacity to harm and elicits threat and therefore should trigger stronger incapacitative motives for punishing an offender. In contrast, prestige signals the observer's admiration of the target and therefore should elicit a strong motivation to help an offender reintegrate into society.Studies 1 and 2 manipulated an offender's status (power vs. prestige vs. control) and group identity (ingroup vs. outgroup). Supporting our hypotheses, both studies revealed that observers had stronger incapacitative motivations towards powerful as opposed to prestigious offenders, particularly when the offender came from the ingroup. Study 2 also showed that observers had stronger restorative motives towards a prestigious as opposed to powerful offender. Contrary to expectations, group identity did not moderate the effect of status on observer's restorative motives. Study 3 manipulated power and prestige separately and showed that power elicits stronger incapacitative motives through ingroup threat and perceived capacity to harm. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings. K E Y W O R D Sgroup identity, incapacitative and restorative motives for punishment, offense, status as power vs. prestige

Punishment Reactions to Powerful Suspects

“…We used the 16-item motives for punishment scale (Fousiani & Demoulin, 2019; Fousiani & Van Prooijen, 2019; Fousiani & Van Prooijen, in press; Fousiani et al, 2019) to assess the various motives for punishment, including (a) utilitarian motives and its sub-dimensions (private deterrence, public deterrence, and incapacitation) ( a = .94), (b) retributive motives ( a = .92), and (c) restorative motives ( a = .85) for punishment (1 = absolutely disagree , 7 = absolutely agree ). The literature distinguishes between deterrent private, deterrent public, and incapacitative motives for punishment.…”

Instrumental goals shape EU citizens' attitudes to the Russia–Ukraine war over time

“…Incapacitative Motives for Sanctioning Russia was assessed in T1 and T2 with the scale of Fousiani and Van Prooijen (2019, 2022a, 2022b); see also (Fousiani & Demoulin, 2019; Fousiani et al, 2019) after adapting it to the specifics of the study. The scale included five items (e.g., “The main reasons to back sanctions against Russia should be to incapacitate Russia and prevent it from violating other countries' basic human rights in the future”).…”

“…The second wave took place 2 months later (May, 2022) when Russian forces had blocked Ukrainian ports, contributing to a global food security crisis, and when the EU had agreed to ban 90% of Russian oil imports by the end of the year. At each time point, we measured participants' instrumental reasons to cooperate with Russia during the war, support for the Russian invasion, imposition of incapacitative punishments to Russia (i.e., stop Russia from causing further harm; Carlsmith & Darley, 2008; Fousiani & Van Prooijen, 2022a; Kahane et al, 2018), identification with EU (i.e., sense of belonging to the EU; see Sani et al, 2015; Tajfel & Turner, 1986), and identification with the NATO, a broader superordinate social identity of Greeks. Importantly, besides the above measures that mostly assess attitudes; we included two behavioural measures in Time 2, namely opposition to the Russian–Ukraine war and support for sanctions against Russia.…”

“…For the reasons described above, we assume that the EU directives (e.g., to join sanctions against Russia and to oppose to the Russian invasion of Ukraine) are seen as highly costly to EU member states' national interests whereas supporting Russia is seen as having higher instrumental value (i.e., is economically more profitable). As EU sanctions accumulated over time since the onset of the war, it can be expected that the perceived instrumental value of cooperating with Russia would prompt EU counties to progressively oppose the EU policies and thus respond with decreased willingness to endorse sanctions against Russia and incapacitate Russia (i.e., assign utilitarian sanctions with the aim to deter an offender from re‐offending in the future or from causing further harm; Carlsmith & Darley, 2008; Fousiani & Van Prooijen, 2022a; Kahane et al, 2018), as well as with a progressively increased support for the Russian invasion in Ukraine. Importantly, we also expect that for the same reasons, EU countries will progressively identify with the EU identity less (i.e., their sense of belonging to the superordinate group of EU and their sense of commonality with its members will decrease; see Sani et al, 2015; Tajfel & Turner, 1986) to the extent that they perceive cooperating with Russia as more profitable.…”