TY - JOUR
T1 - Fairness violations elicit greater punishment on behalf of another than for oneself
AU - FeldmanHall, Oriel
AU - Sokol-Hessner, Peter
AU - Van Bavel, Jay J.
AU - Phelps, Elizabeth A.
N1 - Funding Information:
We are grateful to Dean Mobbs and Tim Dalgleish for their early help and support with this research. This research is supported by a grant from the National Institute of Aging.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2014 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved.
PY - 2015/2
Y1 - 2015/2
N2 - Classic psychology and economic studies argue that punishment is the standard response to violations of fairness norms. Typically, individuals are presented with the option to punish the transgressor or not. However, such a narrow choice set may fail to capture stronger alternative preferences for restoring justice. Here we show, in contrast to the majority of findings on social punishment, that other forms of justice restoration (for example, compensation to the victim) are strongly preferred to punitive measures. Furthermore, these alternative preferences for restoring justice depend on the perspective of the deciding agent. When people are the recipient of an unfair offer, they prefer to compensate themselves without seeking retribution, even when punishment is free. Yet when people observe a fairness violation targeted at another, they change their decision to the most punitive option. Together these findings indicate that humans prefer alternative forms of justice restoration to punishment alone.
AB - Classic psychology and economic studies argue that punishment is the standard response to violations of fairness norms. Typically, individuals are presented with the option to punish the transgressor or not. However, such a narrow choice set may fail to capture stronger alternative preferences for restoring justice. Here we show, in contrast to the majority of findings on social punishment, that other forms of justice restoration (for example, compensation to the victim) are strongly preferred to punitive measures. Furthermore, these alternative preferences for restoring justice depend on the perspective of the deciding agent. When people are the recipient of an unfair offer, they prefer to compensate themselves without seeking retribution, even when punishment is free. Yet when people observe a fairness violation targeted at another, they change their decision to the most punitive option. Together these findings indicate that humans prefer alternative forms of justice restoration to punishment alone.
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U2 - 10.1038/ncomms6306
DO - 10.1038/ncomms6306
M3 - Article
C2 - 25350814
AN - SCOPUS:84921852429
SN - 2041-1723
VL - 5
JO - Nature communications
JF - Nature communications
M1 - 5306
ER -