Children Punish Unfair Sharing but Show Mixed Attitudes Towards Other Punishers

• In Event: Beyond Punishment: How Do Children Respond to Moral Transgressions?

Abstract

Humans punish individuals who violate social norms, even if they have to pay a cost and the violation does not affect them directly. This so-called third-party punishment is an important mechanism to maintain cooperation in a group (Gächter et al., 2008). However, adults do not always endorse third-party punishment as the best way to intervene against a transgression (Jordan et al., 2016; Raihani & Bshary, 2015). Here, we examine if the same intuition is present in early childhood despite children's propensity to enact punishment themselves.
Study 1 examined how 5- to 9-year-olds (n=60) enact third-party punishment against unfair sharing. Children observed that one person (divider) shared coins unfairly, keeping three for herself and giving one to a recipient (3:1). With age, children took coins from the unfair divider in a way that established exact equality between the divider and the recipient (e.g., turning 3:1 into 1:1; Figure 1). This result suggests that over development, children enact punishment actively in a way that establishes equality between two other people.
However, Study 2 showed that when evaluating similar punishment scenarios, children did not endorse punishment as an appropriate response to unfairness. Specifically, 5- to 10-year-olds (n=68) heard a similar scenario involving unfair sharing as in Study 1 and evaluated the third-party punisher who took 0, 1, 2, or 3 items from the unfair sharer. If children’s evaluations are consistent with the behavior demonstrated in Study 1, they would judge taking 2 items (“equality-establishing punishment”) most positively, while taking 0 items (“no punishment”) most negatively. However, across ages, children evaluated taking 0 items from the unfair sharer (“no punishment”) most positively, followed by taking 1 item and 2 items, which did not differ significantly from each other. They judged taking 3 items (“harshest punishment”) most negatively (Figure 2). This result suggests that children do not endorse punishment as an appropriate response to unfair sharing, revealing an inconsistency between their own behavioral choice and evaluations.
Study 3 examined how children evaluate third-party punishment when an alternative intervention–compensation–is available. Five- to 9-year-olds (n=80) heard a story in which one third party (the punisher) took candies away from the unfair divider while the other third party (the compensator) gave candies to the disadvantaged recipient. Children rated both third parties positively on a Likert scale, but they preferred compensators over punishers in the forced-choice tasks. This result shows that children conceptualize compensation as a more preferable intervention than punishment.
Together, our studies show that children engage in third-party punishment actively to establish equality (Study 1). However, they do not necessarily view punishment positively as a way to intervene against a transgression (Study 2) and prefer compensation over punishment (Study 3). These findings align with work in social psychology showing a dissociation between attitudes and behaviors (Banaji & Heiphetz, 2010). By uncovering differences between children’s propensity to punish and their evaluations of other punishers, the current results challenge the assumption in the literature that people regard punishment as a valid intervention.

Authors

• Young-Eun Lee, Columbia University
  Presenting Author

• Larisa Heiphetz Solomon, Columbia University