Victims need more than power: Empowerment and moral change independently predict victims’ satisfaction and willingness to reconcile.

Abstract

Punishing offenders for their misdeeds can restore a sense of justice achieved (i.e., justice-related satisfaction) among victims and increase their willingness to reconcile, especially if offenders signal that they understand why punishment has been inflicted on them. In this article, we theoretically disentangle and empirically test two explanations for this effect. One possible interpretation for this effect is that offender feedback empowers the victim and that empowerment is the crucial prerequisite for reconciliation. An alternative interpretation is that offender feedback benefits the victim because it suggests that the punishment had an educational effect and initiated a positive "moral change" in the offender. Six studies-four scenario and two autobiographic recall studies (combined N = 2,134)-suggest that the positive effects of offender feedback on victims' justice-related satisfaction and willingness to reconcile cannot be reduced to empowerment. Empowerment and moral change rather constitute two independent mechanisms explaining when and why punishment facilitates the posttransgression process. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings (e.g., for restorative justice procedures).

Not revenge, but change is sweet: Experimental evidence of how offender change and punishment play independent roles in victims' sense of justice

“…The current findings again support the idea that the restoration of victims' sense of power as well as the re-affirmation of values are two separate ways contributing to justice perceptions (Wenzel et al, 2008) and specifically victims' justice-related satisfaction (see also Fischer et al, 2022).…”

“…Similarly, others have found that restorative responses to offences can increase justice perceptions without harmful punishment (Braithwaite, 1998;Wenzel & Okimoto, 2014). These findings suggest that the positive effects of offender change on victims' justice-related satisfaction are broader than originally suggested (Fischer et al, 2022;Funk et al, 2014) and do not only refer to instances of punishment. Thus, the current studies showed that offender change had beneficial effects even in the absence of punishment.…”

“…Moreover, influencing others' attitudes and behaviour has been suggested to be the exercise of power (Turner, 2005). In line with this, using a correlational design, Fischer et al (2022) recently found in autobiographical recall studies that perceived offender change mediates the positive effect of revenge-taking on empowerment. Victims might thus feel even more empowered when their punishment successfully brings about offender change than when it does not, which is also in line with the needs-based model of reconciliation (Shnabel & Nadler, 2015).…”

“…Messages from offenders in which they express their understanding that the bad treatment they received is punishment positively affect victims: These messages reduce aggressive thoughts (Gollwitzer & Denzler, 2009) and increase satisfaction (Gollwitzer et al, 2011). Specifically, punishers are most satisfied when offenders communicate that they acknowledge their wrong and demonstrate attitude change by reaffirming shared values, and a change in future behaviour by increasing the likelihood of not to harm the victim or others again (Fischer et al, 2022; Funk et al, 2014). Similarly, punishment that produces a moral change in offenders is preferred over punishment that expresses the group's affirmation of shared values (Okimoto & Wenzel, 2009), indicating that offender change is an important outcome.…”

What Drives Second- and Third-Party Punishment?

“…Importantly, this does not mean that people consider punishment to be fair only to the extent that it makes the offender suffer (the proverbial eye-for-an-eye principle; the “lex talionis”). Rather, the findings reported here and elsewhere (e.g., Fischer et al, in press; Funk et al., 2014) suggest that punishment helps close the injustice gap (in the eyes of the punisher) even in the absence of suffering on the part of the offender (Aharoni et al., 2022). Thus, rebalancing the scales of justice can be achieved in many different ways.…”