Why do children and adults think other people punish?

Abstract

Past research has demonstrated that both consequentialist motives (such as deterrence) and deontological motives (such as "just deserts") underlie children's and adults' punitive behavior. But what motives do we ascribe to others who pursue punishment? The present work explores this question by assessing which punitive motives children (6-and 7-year-olds, n = 100; 67% White; 55% female) and adults (n = 100; 76% White; 35% female) attribute to individuals who witnessed and punished a transgression (third-party punishment). Beyond this, we varied the social role of the punisher (a teacher, an adult visiting a school, a fellow peer) to examine whether motivational ascriptions vary depending on social context. Across these contexts, children endorsed a variety of punishment motives but consistently rejected the notion that individuals punish for the purpose of inflicting suffering. Adults-like children-prioritized consequentialist motives but, in more personal contexts (involving a child punishing their peer), considered "just deserts" a more plausible motive. These findings speak to developmental and contextual variation in individuals' theories about punitive motives and provide insight into how individuals understand and respond to punishment in everyday life.

Colombian youths’ reasoning about retributive and restorative justice in the 2016 peace accord: Associations with trust.

“…While punishment was often rated positively in response to loss of life, it may be that adolescents with higher and lower levels of trust explained their positive ratings of punishment in different ways. For instance, believing that individuals may change through instrumental punishment may also underlie the endorsement of punitive solutions (Marshall et al, 2022). Thus, differences in adolescents’ informational assumptions about the goal and efficacy of different solutions may help explain some of the variability in their views of punitive approaches (Barreiro, 2012; Oosterhoff et al, 2018; Wainryb, 1991).…”

When not helping is nice: Children’s changing evaluations of helping during COVID-19.

“…Regardless, one general explanation for these age effects relates to the development of cognitive flexibility in children. As described in the beginning of the article, it is possible that younger children have more difficulty weighing competing moral and social arguments, and—as a result—are less flexible in their judgments of helpfulness in comparison with older children, who are more readily able to reconcile various moral concerns (Killen et al, 2018; Marshall, Gollwitzer, Mermin-Bunnell, et al, 2022; Marshall, Gollwitzer, & Bloom, 2022; Nucci et al, 2018; Turiel, 2008). Given this finding for Action Evaluations, it is not especially clear why we do not find age effects for Character Evaluations.…”

“…Indeed, some work points toward the possibility that age interacts with whether children exhibit more or less flexibility in their judgments of helping. Specifically, young children’s judgments about helping are generally less sensitive to the influence of social context compared with older children’s (e.g., Geraci et al, 2021; Marshall, Mermin-Bunnell, et al, 2020, Marshall, Wynn, et al, 2020; Marshall, Gollwitzer, Mermin-Bunnell, et al, 2022; Marshall, Gollwitzer, & Bloom, 2022; Miller et al, 1990).…”

Third-party punishers who express emotions are trusted more

“…However, although trustors' behaviour and self-reported perceptions indicated that they expected anger and disgust expressing third parties to be more trustworthy and co-operative, other inferences could have been made regarding third parties' motives. Third parties may punish due to principles such as retribution or to achieve consequences such as deterrence [38] and people perceive others to punish for both reasons [39]. Emotion expressions communicate information about motivational dispositions and behavioural tendencies [35].…”