Moral Punishment in Everyday Life

Hofmann, Wilhelm; Brandt, Mark J.; Wisneski, Daniel C.; Rockenbach, Bettina; Skitka, Linda J.

doi:10.1177/0146167218775075

Cited by 90 publications

(88 citation statements)

References 76 publications

(94 reference statements)

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“…As important as Trump’s contribution to hate and punishing attitudes may be, the vengefulness many of our respondents clearly expressed has influenced military, political, and everyday decisions since before Trump’s election (see, e.g., refs. 13 – 15 , 17 , and 28 ) and will continue when he is no longer in office. Moreover, further analysis of our survey data indicates that there is more to these attitudes than simply echoing Trump.…”

Section: Survey 1 Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…An extensive multidisciplinary literature has documented the prevalence and correlates of revenge, retribution, and punishment in American personal, political, and military contexts. Vengeful tendencies have been found to predict support for wars and assassinations ( 10 – 16 ) and to be prevalent in the desire to punish transgressors in everyday life as well ( 17 ). The strongest attitudinal predictor of vengefulness in warfare has been the degree to which an individual supports the death penalty for persons convicted of murder ( 16 , 18 ), a finding replicated in the Sagan and Valentino study ( 9 ).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Virtuous violence from the war room to death row

Slovic

Mertz

Markowitz

et al. 2020

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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How likely is it that someone would approve of using a nuclear weapon to kill millions of enemy civilians in the hope of ending a ground war that threatens thousands of American troops? Ask them how they feel about prosecuting immigrants, banning abortion, supporting the death penalty, and protecting gun rights and you will know. This is the finding from two national surveys of Democrats and Republicans that measured support for punitive regulations and policies across these four seemingly unrelated issues, and a fifth, using nuclear weapons against enemy civilians (in survey 1) or approving of disproportionate killing with conventional weapons (in survey 2). Those who support these various policies that threaten harm to many people tend to believe that the victims are blameworthy and it is ethical to take actions or policies that might harm them. This lends support to the provocative notion of “virtuous violence” put forth by Fiske and Rai [A. P. Fiske, T. S. Rai, Virtuous Violence: Hurting and Killing to Create, Sustain, End, and Honor Social Relationships (2014)], who assert that people commit violence because they believe it is the morally right thing to do. The common thread of punitiveness underlying and connecting these issues needs to be recognized, understood, and confronted by any society that professes to value fundamental human rights and wishes to prevent important decisions from being affected by irrelevant and harmful sociocultural and political biases.

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Section: Survey 1 Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Virtuous violence from the war room to death row

Slovic

Mertz

Markowitz

et al. 2020

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“…Reports of both anger and disgust are associated with desires to punish moral offenders (Hutcherson & Gross, 2011;Hofmann, Brandt, Wisneski, Rockenbach, & Skitka, 2018). However, the nature of punishment aligned with anger versus disgust might differ.…”

Section: Disgust Anger and Aggressionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Disgust, Anger, and Aggression: Further Tests of the Equivalence of Moral Emotions

Tybur

Molho

Cakmak

et al. 2020

Collabra: Psychology

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People often report disgust toward moral violations. Some perspectives posit that this disgust is indistinct from anger. Here, we replicate and extend recent work suggesting that disgust and anger toward moral violations are in fact distinct in terms of the situations in which they are activated and their correspondence with aggressive sentiments. We tested three hypotheses concerning emotional responses to moral violations: (1) disgust is associated with lower-cost, indirectly aggressive motives (e.g., gossip and social exclusion), whereas anger is associated with higher-cost, directly aggressive motives (e.g., physical violence); (2) disgust is higher toward violations affecting others than it is toward violations affecting the self, and anger is higher toward violations affecting the self than it is toward violations affecting others; and (3) abilities to inflict costs on or withhold benefits from others (measured via physical strength and physical attractiveness, respectively) relate to anger, but not to disgust. These hypotheses were tested in a within-subjects study in which 233 participants came to the lab twice and reported their emotional responses and aggressive sentiments toward self-targeting and other-targeting moral violations. Participants' upper body strength and physical attractiveness were also measured with a dynamometer and photograph ratings, respectively. The first two hypotheses were supported-disgust (but not anger) was related to indirect aggression whereas anger (but not disgust) was related to direct aggression, and disgust was higher toward other-targeting violations whereas anger was higher toward self-targeting violations. However, physical strength and physical attractiveness were unrelated to anger or disgust or to endorsements of direct or indirect aggression.

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“…Thus, current moral dilemma research comprises no longer only abstract reasoning about moral dead-or-life situations (e.g., [3, 4]) but also research on moral decision-making in a variety of daily life situations (e.g., [17, 18]). Applying ecological momentary assessment in a large study sample ( N = 1.252 participants), Hofmann et al [18] repeatedly assessed moral or immoral acts and experiences in everyday life.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Decision-making in everyday moral conflict situations: Development and validation of a new measure

et al. 2019

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In everyday life, we are often confronted with morally conflicting social interaction situations. Therefore, the main objective of the present set of studies was the development and validation of a new measure to assess decision-making in everyday moral conflict situations. All vignettes required a decision between an altruistic versus an egoistic behavioral response alternative. In three independent surveys ( N = 200), we developed a 40-items measure with preferable mean rates of altruistic decisions (Study 1), clear representation of altruistic and egoistic response classes (Study 2), unambiguousness of social closeness classifications (socially close vs. socially distant protagonists; Studies 1 and 2), and high similarity to reality ratings (Studies 1 and 2). Additionally, we developed two parallelized item sets for future use in within-subjects design studies and investigated the measurement properties of our new scale (Studies 1 and 3). Results of Rasch model analyses and classical test theory fit indices showed unidimensionality and confirmed the appropriateness of the fragmentation into two parallelized item sets. Notably, in our data, there were neither effects of social closeness nor gender on the percentage of altruistic decisions. In sum, we propose the Everyday Moral Conflict Situations (EMCS) Scale as a promising new measurement tool that may facilitate further research in different research areas due to its broad applicability.

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Moral Punishment in Everyday Life

Cited by 90 publications

References 76 publications

Virtuous violence from the war room to death row

Virtuous violence from the war room to death row

Disgust, Anger, and Aggression: Further Tests of the Equivalence of Moral Emotions

Decision-making in everyday moral conflict situations: Development and validation of a new measure

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