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

Abstract

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.

What Drives Second- and Third-Party Punishment?

“…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).…”

“…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).…”

“…Furthermore, the studies presented in this topical issue differ not only in the methodological approaches used to investigate the motivational basis of laypeople’s punishment but also in the populations studied. Most prominently, the majority of data were collected in English-speaking countries such as the UK (Fousiani & Van Prooijen, 2022; Molho et al, 2022; Rehren & Zisman, 2022) or the US (Aharoni et al, 2022; Hechler & Kessler, 2022) but some studies were conducted in Germany (Funk & Mischkowski, 2022; Strauß & Bondü, 2022) and Italy (De Cristofaro & Giacomantonio, 2022). Samples not only differ regarding their country of origin, but also the age group that was studied.…”

“…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 third-party 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).…”