'It's Not About the Money. It's About Sending a Message!': Unpacking the Components of Revenge

Abstract

We examine whether belief-based preferences-caring about what transgressors believe-play a crucial role in punishment decisions: Do punishers want to make sure that transgressors understand why they are being punished, and is this desire to affect beliefs often prioritized over distributive and retributive preferences? We test whether punishers derive utility from three distinct sources: material outcomes (their own and the transgressor's payoff), affective states (the transgressor's suffering), and cognitive states (the transgressor's beliefs about the cause of that suffering). In a novel, preregistered experiment (N = 1,959) we demonstrate that consideration for transgressors' beliefs affects punishment decisions on its own, regardless of the considerations for material outcomes (distributional preferences) and affective states (retributive preferences). By contrast, we find very little evidence for pure retributive preferences (i.e., to merely inflict suffering on transgressors). We also show that people who would otherwise enact harsh punishments, are willing to punish less severely, if by doing so they can tell the transgressor why they are punishing them. Finally, we demonstrate that the preference for affecting transgressors' beliefs cannot be explained by deterrence motives (i.e., to make transgressors behave better in the future).

A Painful Message

“…Our findings both replicate and qualify the “intuitive retributivism” hypothesis, according to which people, when thinking about appropriate punishment for another person’s wrongdoing, are concerned with re-balancing the scales of justice. Our results are also consistent with other empirical research showing that cues of understanding, remorse and apology increase punishment satisfaction (Bauer & Poama, 2020; Funk et al, 2014; Gollwitzer & Denzler, 2009; Gollwitzer et al, 2011; Molnar et al, 2020). These findings suggest the psychological plausibility of communicative theories of punishment, which argue that the goals of punishment are to send a message to perpetrators that they have violated a community norm or law and that they must respond appropriately with regret, apology, and ideally offers of reparation and attempts at rehabilitation.…”

“…This difference in satisfaction emerged even among participants who did not reduce their own sentencing recommendation. This pattern of results conceptually replicates the “understanding effect” that previous research has found (Funk et al, 2014; Gollwitzer & Denzler, 2009; Gollwitzer et al, 2011; Molnar et al., 2020).…”

“…Our specific objective was to test the effects of perpetrator suffering and understanding in the expression of retributive punishment attitudes toward criminal offenders. The understanding hypothesis, as found in previous research (e.g., Funk et al, 2014;Gollwitzer & Denzler, 2009;Gollwitzer et al, 2011;Molnar et al, 2020), predicts that the signal that perpetrators understand why they have been punished (and regret it) will increase people's satisfaction with the punishment and reduce additional punishment recommendations, relative to the no understanding condition (a main effect of understanding). The suffering hypothesis, also receiving some support (e.g., Eder et al, 2020), predicts that the induction of suffering in the perpetrator will be sufficient to evoke satisfaction with the punishment and reduce additional punishment recommendations.…”

“…Other studies using economic games have shown similar effects, finding, for instance, that anonymous participants are more likely to shift from a severe to moderate punishment strategy when they believe cheaters would be informed of why they have been penalized – namely because they treated their partner unfairly (Molnar et al, 2020). Support for the communicative function of punishment has even been found among young children, who elected to incur greater personal costs to punish wrongdoers who would be informed about the punishment than those who would not (Marshall et al, 2020; Twardawski & Hilbig, 2020).…”

Punishment is Organized around Principles of Communicative Inference

“…In the absence of such an acknowledgment, punishers are dissatisfied with the punishment no matter how strong of a cost it levies on the target (Funk, McGeer, & Gollwitzer, 2014). In fact, even those punishers who typically punish harshly will willingly punish less severely if that would allow the target to better understand their intent (Molnar, Chaudhry, Loewenstein, 2020). As these findings PUNISHMENT AS COMMUNICATION demonstrate, the desire to communicate one's beliefs, values, and disapproval plays a central role in the kind of punishment a punisher chooses to enact.…”