Retributive versus compensatory justice: Observers' preference for punishing in response to criminal offenses

Context Modulates Perceived Fairness in Altruistic Punishment: Neural Signatures from ERPs and EEG Oscillations

Social norms and altruistic punitive behaviours are both based on the integration of information from multiple contexts. Individual behavioural performance can be altered by loss and gain contexts, which produce different mental states and subjective perceptions. In this study, we used event-related potential and time-frequency techniques to examine performance on a third-party punishment task and to explore the neural mechanisms underlying context-dependent differences in punishment decisions. The results indicated that individuals were more likely to reject unfairness in the context of loss (vs. gain) and to increase punishment as unfairness increased. In contrast, fairness appeared to cause an early increase in cognitive control signal enhancement, as indicated by the P2 amplitude and theta oscillations, and a later increase in emotional and motivational salience during decision-making in gain vs. loss contexts, as indicated by the medial frontal negativity and beta oscillations. In summary, individuals were more willing to sanction violations of social norms in the loss context than in the gain context and rejecting unfair losses induced more equity-related cognitive conflict than accepting unfair gains, highlighting the importance of context (i.e., gain vs. loss) in equity-related social decision-making processes.

Losing the lottery of life: Examining intuitions of desert toward the socially and genetically "unlucky" in criminal punishment contexts

This research presents three experiments that examine how natural "luck" (social and genetic luck) may affect lay intuitions toward desert-based criminal punishment. Study 1 examined if intuitions surrounding desert-based rewards in relation to good qualities/advantages ascribed to natural luck would extend to desert-based punishments in relation to bad qualities/disadvantages ascribed to natural luck. Study 2 examined how both social and genetic luck affect support for desert-based punishment across different criminal offenses and tests the relevance of immanent justice reasoning to such support. Study 3 examined whether findings in the prior studies are specific to desert-based punishment and immanent justice reasoning, or if natural luck elicits broader punishment judgments and types of justice reasoning. Results showed that known intuitions surrounding desert-based rewards do extend to desert-based punishments in instances of natural luck. Immanent justice reasoning was strongly associated with support for desert-based punishment in instances of both social and genetic luck. However, genetic luck, as compared to social luck, significantly increased support for desert-based punishment, with imminent justice reasoning mediating this increased support. Implications are discussed in relation to capital sentencing and better understanding lay intuitions toward the punishment of criminal offenders who may have qualities ascribed to the "natural lottery."

Social status affects how third parties assess unfairly shared losses and unfairly shared gains

The present paper focused on how a third party's social status affects third-party intervention to maintain social fairness. Study 1 adopted a quasi-experimental design. Selecting high and low-status members of real social groups, we observed that high-status individuals intervened more forcibly and more frequently when assessing the fairness of players' behavior in a dictator game (DG). The manifestation of social status is generally divided into power and economic capital. In Study 2a, using the same DG punishment-compensation paradigm we randomly assigned the third party in the lab to high, medium, and low impact conditions, where their actions had relative multiplier effects on the resources retained by dictators and recipients. This tested whether the power to influence the situation would systematically affect third party's behavior. We found that greater influence predicted increased interventions. Study 2b investigated the influence of economic capital or intrinsic wealth on a third party's altruistic behavior by varying how much capital the third party had at their disposal to spend on punishment or recompensing. Having high capital predicted an increase in the size of penalty inflicted or compensation offered, but resource abundance had no effect on the likelihood that the third party would intervene. In conclusion, the paper showed that the social status of the third party truly does affect their altruistic interventions and the impact of social status on altruistic behaviors for maintaining fairness by the third party occurred primarily through the third parties' perception of their power. Furthermore, the influence of gain and loss contexts and social status on third-party punishment and compensation were independent of each other. This paper provided a new perspective for third-party altruistic behaviors and help to clarify the view of social fairness.

Empathy-based tolerance towards poor norm violators in third-party punishment

Third-party punishment (TPP) plays an important role in fairness norm enforcement. This study investigated how the economic status of proposers could modulate third parties' behavioural and neural responses to unfairness. Participants played a TPP game as third parties deciding whether to punish proposers after observing the offers from proposers while behavioural and electroencephalogram (EEG) data were recorded. The proposers were of either high economic status or low economic status, and the recipients were middle class. The behavioural results indicated that participants reported decreased punishment for poor-proposed unfair offers compared to rich-proposed unfair offers, and this effect was stronger for highly unfair offers. Neurally, greater P200, a component involved in empathy processing, was observed in response to highly unfair offers (i.e. 90:10 and 80:20) proposed by the poor, suggesting that when the targets of severe punishments were poor proposers, participants showed greater empathy for poor norm violators in highly unfair trials. Taken together, these findings help to elucidate that the third-parties tend to tolerate the norm-violating behaviours conducted by the poor and provided further neuroscience evidence for the influence of economic status of proposers on TPP.

An exploration of third parties' preference for compensation over punishment: six experimental demonstrations

Research suggests that to restore equity, third parties prefer compensation of a victim over the punishment of a perpetrator. It remains unclear, however, whether this preference for compensation is stable or specific to certain situations. In six experimental studies, we find that adjustments in the characteristics of the situation or in the available behavioral options hardly modify the preference of compensation over punishment. This preference for compensation was found even in cases where punishment might refrain a perpetrator from acting unfairly again in the future, and even when punishment has a greater impact in restoring equity than compensation does. Thus, the preference of compensation over punishment appears to be quite robust. Implications and ideas for future research are discussed.

Punish the Perpetrator or Compensate the Victim? Gain vs. Loss Context Modulate Third-Party Altruistic Behaviors

Third-party punishment and third-party compensation are primary responses to observed norms violations. Previous studies mostly investigated these behaviors in gain rather than loss context, and few study made direct comparison between these two behaviors. We conducted three experiments to investigate third-party punishment and third-party compensation in the gain and loss context. Participants observed two persons playing Dictator Game to share an amount of gain or loss, and the proposer would propose unfair distribution sometimes. In Study 1A, participants should decide whether they wanted to punish proposer. In Study 1B, participants decided to compensate the recipient or to do nothing. This two experiments explored how gain and loss contexts might affect the willingness to altruistically punish a perpetrator, or to compensate a victim of unfairness. Results suggested that both third-party punishment and compensation were stronger in the loss context. Study 2 directly compare third-party punishment and third-party compensation in the both contexts, by allowing participants choosing between punishment, compensation and keeping. Participants chose compensation more often than punishment in the loss context, and chose more punishments in the gain context. Empathic concern partly explained between-context differences of altruistic compensation and punishment. Our findings provide insights on modulating effect of context on third-party altruistic decisions.