Navigating between punishment, avoidance, and instruction: The form and function of responses to moral violations varies across adult and child transgressors

Abstract

Immoral actions can elicit a wide array of responses, ranging from pugnacious confrontation to passive distancing. What leads onlookers to react so differently to various violations? Across four studies (N = 2,085), we investigated how responses vary depending on whether moral transgressions are committed by adults or by children. Findings reliably demonstrated that adult participants were more likely to avoid adult transgressors, and more likely to instruct child transgressors about why their actions were wrong. These patterns arose from varying cost-benefit structures, derived in part from asymmetries in interpersonal power between adults and children, rendering adults' direct confrontation of children both less costly and more beneficial. Although adults' transgressions were judged to be relatively more wrong, participants had greater anxiety about the negative consequences of confronting adults, and they viewed adults' personalities as less malleable, thus diminishing the effectiveness of confrontation. In contrast, 4-to 9-year-old children did not differ in their willingness to avoid or instruct adult and child transgressors. Across studies, the content of transgressions (e.g., being harmful or impure) mattered little for determining the nature of responses. Overall, diverse responses to moral transgressions were uniquely tailored to the different costs and benefits associated with confronting adult and child transgressors.