Why We Think Other People Punish: The Role of Development and Social Relationships

• In Event: The Role of Social Relationships in Shaping Children’s Socio-Moral Reasoning

Abstract

A key feature of our moral psychology involves a desire to punish antisocial others even when we are unaffected by the transgression (so called, “third-party punishment”). Many have argued that this sort of moral behavior plays a key role in sustaining cooperation by promoting prosocial behavior and deterring antisocial behavior (e.g., Balliet, Mulder, & Van Lange, 2011). Consistent with this, researchers have found that children (Marshall, Yudkin, & Crockett, 2020) and adults (Crockett, Ozdemir, & Fehr, 2014) punish antisocial others for consequentialist reasons (i.e., individuals will punish antisocial others with the goal of reforming their behavior). Interestingly, this research also finds that children and adults punish antisocial others for retributive reasons (i.e., individuals will punish transgressors even when punishment has no potential to promote prosocial outcomes). Together, this work suggests that our punitive desires are rooted in a combination of both retributive and consequentialist desires.

The present work builds on this research by examining why children and adults think other people punish. Do we think others punish for retributive purposes or for consequentialist ones? By asking this question, we can start to characterize children’s naïve theory of punitive motives and contrast it with adults’ intuitions. To accomplish this, we presented children (6- and 7-year-olds; n = 121) and adults (n = 126) across four studies with scenarios in which an individual pursues third-party punishment. We were also interested in the role that social context plays in shaping how children and adults reason about punitive motivations (Schein, 2020). Accordingly, we manipulated the social role of the punisher—it was either an institutional actor (Study 1), a non-institutional adult (Study 2), a fellow peer (Study 3), or the best friend of the victim (Study 4).

We asked participants about six explanations grounded in philosophical theories of punishment (Figure 1). Specifically, we included explanations stemming from consequentialist (expressive, deterrence, procedural, restorative, rehabilitative) and retributivist perspectives on punishment motivations. Participants then rated the degree to which they believed these different motivations best characterized the punisher’s punitive desire. We also included two control trials to ensure that participants understood how to utilize the scale.

We found that children generally endorsed consequentialist motivations and rejected retribution ones, although they endorsed retributive motives more than the control explanations (Figure 1). Interestingly, these patterns were immune to any influence of social relationship. Like children, adults for the most part endorsed consequentialist motives across all studies. But, unlike children, their judgments varied substantially depending on relational context. Specifically, adults considered attributed retributive motives when the punisher was described as a peer or as the victim’s best friend. In general, the results demonstrate that children consider punishment as largely motivated by consequentialist concerns, regardless of social context, whereas adults exhibit more nuanced judgments about punitive motives. Additionally, these findings align with recent other work finding that younger children’s moral judgments tend to be less sensitive to relational considerations (Marshall, Wynn, & Bloom, 2020; Marshall, Mermin-Bunnell, & Bloom, 2020).

Authors

• Julia Marshall, Boston College
  Presenting Author

• Paul Bloom, Yale University
  Non-Presenting Author