Cargando…

The Value of Vengeance and the Demand for Deterrence

Humans will incur costs to punish others who violate social norms. Theories of justice highlight 2 motives for punishment: a forward-looking deterrence of future norm violations and a backward-looking retributive desire to harm. Previous studies of costly punishment have not isolated how much people...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Crockett, Molly J., Özdemir, Yagiz, Fehr, Ernst
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: American Psychological Association 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4242077/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25285429
http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xge0000018
_version_ 1782345936969662464
author Crockett, Molly J.
Özdemir, Yagiz
Fehr, Ernst
author_facet Crockett, Molly J.
Özdemir, Yagiz
Fehr, Ernst
author_sort Crockett, Molly J.
collection PubMed
description Humans will incur costs to punish others who violate social norms. Theories of justice highlight 2 motives for punishment: a forward-looking deterrence of future norm violations and a backward-looking retributive desire to harm. Previous studies of costly punishment have not isolated how much people are willing to pay for retribution alone, because typically punishment both inflicts damage (satisfying the retributive motive) and communicates a norm violation (satisfying the deterrence motive). Here, we isolated retributive motives by examining how much people will invest in punishment when the punished individual will never learn about the punishment. Such “hidden” punishment cannot deter future norm violations but was nevertheless frequently used by both 2nd-party victims and 3rd-party observers of norm violations, indicating that retributive motives drive punishment decisions independently from deterrence goals. While self-reports of deterrence motives correlated with deterrence-related punishment behavior, self-reports of retributive motives did not correlate with retributive punishment behavior. Our findings reveal a preference for pure retribution that can lead to punishment without any social benefits.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-4242077
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2014
publisher American Psychological Association
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-42420772014-11-24 The Value of Vengeance and the Demand for Deterrence Crockett, Molly J. Özdemir, Yagiz Fehr, Ernst J Exp Psychol Gen Articles Humans will incur costs to punish others who violate social norms. Theories of justice highlight 2 motives for punishment: a forward-looking deterrence of future norm violations and a backward-looking retributive desire to harm. Previous studies of costly punishment have not isolated how much people are willing to pay for retribution alone, because typically punishment both inflicts damage (satisfying the retributive motive) and communicates a norm violation (satisfying the deterrence motive). Here, we isolated retributive motives by examining how much people will invest in punishment when the punished individual will never learn about the punishment. Such “hidden” punishment cannot deter future norm violations but was nevertheless frequently used by both 2nd-party victims and 3rd-party observers of norm violations, indicating that retributive motives drive punishment decisions independently from deterrence goals. While self-reports of deterrence motives correlated with deterrence-related punishment behavior, self-reports of retributive motives did not correlate with retributive punishment behavior. Our findings reveal a preference for pure retribution that can lead to punishment without any social benefits. American Psychological Association 2014-10-06 2014-12 /pmc/articles/PMC4242077/ /pubmed/25285429 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xge0000018 Text en © 2014 The Author(s) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ This article has been published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Copyright for this article is retained by the author(s). Author(s) grant(s) the American Psychological Association the exclusive right to publish the article and identify itself as the original publisher.
spellingShingle Articles
Crockett, Molly J.
Özdemir, Yagiz
Fehr, Ernst
The Value of Vengeance and the Demand for Deterrence
title The Value of Vengeance and the Demand for Deterrence
title_full The Value of Vengeance and the Demand for Deterrence
title_fullStr The Value of Vengeance and the Demand for Deterrence
title_full_unstemmed The Value of Vengeance and the Demand for Deterrence
title_short The Value of Vengeance and the Demand for Deterrence
title_sort value of vengeance and the demand for deterrence
topic Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4242077/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25285429
http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xge0000018
work_keys_str_mv AT crockettmollyj thevalueofvengeanceandthedemandfordeterrence
AT ozdemiryagiz thevalueofvengeanceandthedemandfordeterrence
AT fehrernst thevalueofvengeanceandthedemandfordeterrence
AT crockettmollyj valueofvengeanceandthedemandfordeterrence
AT ozdemiryagiz valueofvengeanceandthedemandfordeterrence
AT fehrernst valueofvengeanceandthedemandfordeterrence