Poster #54 - Repeated Transgression Promotes Costly Third-party Punishment in Six-year-olds

• In Event: Poster Session 02

Abstract

Humans have developed large cooperative societies, in part, by punishing antisocial others at their cost even when the transgressor has not directly harmed them. This behavior, known as third-party punishment, plays an important role in deterring further antisocial behavior and enforcing norms. From a developmental perspective, it is known that children start to enact costly third-party punishment from at least around the age of six (Jordan et al., 2014; McAuliffe, Blake, Steinbeis, & Warneken, 2017; Salali, Juda, & Henrich, 2015). Previous studies have shown that both adults and children consider the transgressor’s past behavior when evaluating the deservingness of punishment. In addition, it is widely accepted in today’s judicial system that repeat offenders are punished more severely than first-time offenders. However, the effect of the repetition on actual punitive behavior remains unclear.
Here, in two experiments, we investigated the effects of the repetitive offence information of the transgressors on third-party punishment in six-year-old children (total N=76). In both experiments, children participated in two within conditions: first-time condition, in which they were told that the transgressor had transgressed for the first time, and repeated condition, in which s/he had repeated the antisocial behavior five times in the past. In experiment 1, participants were given the opportunity to punish the transgressor at a personal cost by locking up a toy attractive to the transgressor (Marshall, J., Yudkin, D. A., & Crockett, M. J., 2021). As predicted, more participants engaged in punishment in the repeated condition than in the first-time condition (Figure 1). Participants also tended to restrict the repeat transgressor from playing with the toy for a longer time than the first transgressor.
To examine the underlying mechanism of this effect, in Experiment 2, we investigated whether the repetitive offence information affects trait attributions and behavioral predictions of reoffending about the transgressor. Participants were asked whether the transgressor is mean or nice and whether the transgressor would conduct the same transgression. The results showed that children were more likely to predict that the transgressor would reoffend in the repeated condition than in the first-time condition, while there was no significant effect of the condition on trait attribution (Figure 2). Taken together, these results suggest that six-year-olds predict that people who had repeated antisocial behavior are more likely to reoffend in the future; therefore, they are more willing to punish antisocial others. Our findings indicate that children have deterrent motives for third-party punishment from the early stage of its emergence.

Authors

• Nazu Toda, Osaka University
  Presenting Author

• Rizu Toda, Osaka University

• Yasuhiro Kanakogi, Osaka Uinversity