Punishment is Organized around Principles of Communicative Inference

Abstract

Humans use punishment to influence each other’s behavior. Many current theories presume that this operates as a simple form of incentive. In contrast, we show that people infer the communicative intent behind punishment, which can sometimes diverge sharply from its immediate incentive value. In other words, people respond to punishment not as a reward to be maximized, but as a communicative signal to be interpreted. Specifically, we show that people expect harmless, yet communicative, punishments to be as effective as harmful punishments (Study 1). Under some situation, people display a systematic preference for harmless punishments over more canonical, harmful punishments (Study 2). People readily seek out and infer the communicative message inherent in a punishment (Study 3). And, people expect that learning from punishment depends on the ease with which its communicative intent can be inferred (Study 4). Taken together, these findings demonstrate that people expect punishment to be constructed and interpreted as a communicative act.

Examining Consequentialist Punishment Motives in One-Shot Social Dilemmas

“…Thus, punishers want transgressors to know that they are being punished and why (for similar findings from social psychology, see Gollwitzer & Denzler, 2009; Gollwitzer et al, 2011). People also punish less, for instance, if they can communicate their emotions (Xiao & Houser, 2005), and punishers expect harmless punishment to be as effective as harmful punishment if it is communicative (Sarin et al, 2020; see also Cushman et al, 2022). The present study looked at a related yet different facet of consequentialist punishment and manipulates a factor that has not been studied in the context of punishment decisions so far: we varied experimentally whether punishers knew they would receive information about the effect that their punishment had on the transgressor.…”

Renouncing the attempt versus perpetration distinction

“…In these systems it is the interpretive judicial practice which plays an important role: 'The wrong a law criminalizes turns out to be the product of diverse factors, including not only what the law says, but also how legal officials exercise their discretion to charge, convict, and sentence' (Mendlow, 2019, p. 107). Survey experiments can shed more light on such practice (Adams & Steadman, 2004;Pirker & Skoczeń, 2022a, 2022bPirker & Smolka, 2019;Sarin et al, 2020).…”

Material Benefits Crowd Out Moralistic Punishment

“…Contrary to standard economic assumptions, my hypothesis was that under certain conditions, the introduction of material compensation as payment for punishment may actually decrease willingness to engage in third-party punishment of moral transgressions. This is because in the context of moralistic punishment, the absence of payment or other material benefits sends a clear signal to the punisher, the transgressor, and observers that the punisher is motivated by moral sentiments, which enhances the punisher’s self-image and reputation (Raihani & Bshary, 2015a; Sarin et al, 2021). Accepting payment may interfere with this moral signal and send a negative signal (to other individuals as well as to oneself) about the punisher’s intentions and character.…”