Choosy Moral Punishers

Abstract

The punishment of social misconduct is a powerful mechanism for stabilizing high levels of cooperation among unrelated individuals. It is regularly assumed that humans have a universal disposition to punish social norm violators, which is sometimes labelled “universal structure of human morality” or “pure aversion to social betrayal”. Here we present evidence that, contrary to this hypothesis, the propensity to punish a moral norm violator varies among participants with different career trajectories. In anonymous real-life conditions, future teachers punished a talented but immoral young violinist: they voted against her in an important music competition when they had been informed of her previous blatant misconduct toward fellow violin students. In contrast, future police officers and high school students did not punish. This variation among socio-professional categories indicates that the punishment of norm violators is not entirely explained by an aversion to social betrayal. We suggest that context specificity plays an important role in normative behaviour; people seem inclined to enforce social norms only in situations that are familiar, relevant for their social category, and possibly strategically advantageous.

Estimating the Reproducibility of Experimental Philosophy

“…comprehensive available collection of experimental philosophy papers. 4 However, an initial search through this database revealed that a non-trivial number of papers fell well outside of "experimental philosophy" as we have described it above and as it is typically understood, including papers about, e.g., pragmatic abilities in people with autism spectrum disorder (De Villiers, Stainton, & Szatmari, 2007) or the way people choose to punish norm violators in reallife situations (Clavien et al, 2012).…”

Does suffering suffice? An experimental assessment of desert retributivism

“…Second, we bring experimental techniques to bear on questions of legal punishment, a topic which, with some exceptions has not been the direct concern of experimental philosophers up until now [12][13][14]. Few studies, focus on punishment as a general moral phenomenon, and not on judgments about legal punishment in particular [15][16][17].…”

Does Suffering Suffice? An Experimental Assessment of Desert Retributivism

“…Second, we bring experimental techniques to bear on questions of legal punishment, a topic which, with some exceptions (e.g., Nadelhoffer, Heshmati, Kaplan, Nichols 2013;McGeer & Funk 2017;Robbins & Litton 2017) has not been the direct concern of experimental philosophers up until now. Few studies, such as Cushman (2008), Clavien et al (2012) or Rose & Nichols (2018), focus on punishment as a general moral phenomenon, and not on judgments about legal punishment in particular. Third, we aim to contribute to the experimental philosophy literature not only substantivelynamely, by drawing attention to questions of punishment and retribution -but also methodologically.…”