Punishment is Organized around Principles of Communicative Inference

Sarin, Arunima; Ho, Mark K.; Martin, Justin W.; Cushman, Fiery

doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2020.104544

Cited by 37 publications

(39 citation statements)

References 56 publications

(63 reference statements)

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“…Just as any post-transgression response, punishment is ambiguous with regard to the victim’s underlying motives. As with forgiveness and apologetic behavior, punished transgressors try to infer a punisher’s motives from their response—stated differently, the victim/punisher and the transgressor engage in a “recursive mental state inference” process ( Cushman et al, in press ; Sarin et al, 2021 ). And, critically, the results of this inference process have important downstream consequences for the victim–transgressor relationship.…”

Section: Attributing Victim Responses To Underlying Motivesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Downstream Consequences of Post-Transgression Responses: A Motive-Attribution Framework

Gollwitzer

Okimoto

2021

Pers Soc Psychol Rev

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Victims commonly respond to experienced wrongdoing by punishing or forgiving the transgressor. While much research has looked at predictors and immediate consequences of these post-transgression responses, comparably less research has addressed the conditions under which punishment or forgiveness have positive or negative downstream consequences on the victim–transgressor relationship. Drawing from research on Social Value Orientation (SVO), we argue that both forgiveness and punishment can be rooted in either prosocial (i.e., relationship- or other-oriented), individualistic (i.e., self-oriented), or competitive (i.e., harm-oriented) motives pursued by the victim. Furthermore, we posit that downstream consequences of forgiveness and punishment crucially depend on how the transgressor interprets the victim’s response. The novel motive-attribution framework presented here highlights the importance of alignment between a victim’s motives and a transgressor’s motive attributions underlying post-transgression responses. This framework thus contributes to a better understanding of positive and negative dynamics following post-transgression interactions.

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Section: Attributing Victim Responses To Underlying Motivesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Downstream Consequences of Post-Transgression Responses: A Motive-Attribution Framework

Gollwitzer

Okimoto

2021

Pers Soc Psychol Rev

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“…This is not the case when offences are met with gossip or ostracism, because these tactics do not convey information directly to the punished individuals about what they did wrong. By contrast, verbal confrontation not only imposes costs on the offenders, but can communicate valuable information to them [65,66]. For example, verbally confronting offenders can indicate which behaviours are perceived as offensive, how victimized parties are affected and how the offenders should change their behaviour to signal that they care about the punishers [67-69] 4 .…”

Section: Common and Unique Social Functions Of Distinct Punishment Tacticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Direct punishment and indirect reputation-based tactics to intervene against offences

Molho

2021

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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Punishment and reputation-based mechanisms play a major role in supporting the evolution of human cooperation. Theoretical accounts and field observations suggest that humans use multiple tactics to intervene against offences—including confrontation, gossip and ostracism—which have unique benefits and costs. Here, we draw a distinction between direct punishment tactics (i.e. physical and verbal confrontation) and indirect reputation-based tactics (i.e. gossip and ostracism). Based on this distinction, we sketch the common and unique social functions that different tactics are tailored to serve and describe information-processing mechanisms that potentially underlie decisions concerning how to intervene against offences. We propose that decision rules guiding direct and indirect tactics should weigh information about the benefits of changing others' behaviour versus the costs of potential retaliation. Based on a synthesis of existing evidence, we highlight the role of situational, relational and emotional factors in motivating distinct punishment tactics. We suggest that delineating between direct and indirect tactics can inform debates about the prevalence and functions of punishment and the reputational consequences of third-party intervention against offences. We emphasize the need to study how people use reputation-based tactics for partner recalibration and partner choice, within interdependent relationships and social networks, and in daily life situations. This article is part of the theme issue ‘The language of cooperation: reputation and honest signalling’.

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“…In principle, there are a large number of factors that influence action costs. An agent may incur costs by taking more or less risk (Liu, Pepe, Ullman, Tenenbaum, & Spelke, 2020), by foregoing alternative rewards (Yin, Savani, & Smith, 2021), by exerting great mental e ort in order to realize their goal (Kool & Botvinick, 2018), or by taking actions that will be negatively evaluated by others -potentially leading to punishment or exclusion (Rai & Fiske, 2011;Sarin, Ho, Martin, & Cushman, 2021).…”

Section: The Role Of E Ortmentioning

confidence: 99%

Moral dynamics: Grounding moral judgment in intuitive physics and intuitive psychology

Sosa

Ullman

Tenenbaum³

et al. 2021

Cognition

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When holding others morally responsible, we care about what they did, and what they thought. Traditionally, research in moral psychology has relied on vignette studies, in which a protagonist's actions and thoughts are explicitly communicated. While this research has revealed what variables are important for moral judgment, such as actions and intentions, it is limited in providing a more detailed understanding of exactly how these variables a ect moral judgment. Using dynamic visual stimuli that allow for a more finegrained experimental control, recent studies have proposed a direct mapping from visual features to moral judgments. We embrace the use of visual stimuli in moral psychology, but question the plausibility of a feature-based theory of moral judgment. We propose that the connection from visual features to moral judgments is mediated by an inference about what the observed action reveals about the agent's mental states, and what causal role the agent's action played in bringing about the outcome. We present a computational model that formalizes moral judgments of agents in visual scenes as computations over an intuitive theory of physics combined with an intuitive theory of mind. We test the model's quantitative predictions in three experiments across a wide variety of dynamic interactions.

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Punishment is Organized around Principles of Communicative Inference

Cited by 37 publications

References 56 publications

Downstream Consequences of Post-Transgression Responses: A Motive-Attribution Framework

Downstream Consequences of Post-Transgression Responses: A Motive-Attribution Framework

Direct punishment and indirect reputation-based tactics to intervene against offences

Moral dynamics: Grounding moral judgment in intuitive physics and intuitive psychology

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