Summary: People who intentionally hurt others because they believe they are morally right or justified, do not respond rationally to material benefits, a new study reports. Researchers say those who punish others to signal their own moral goodness may be more likely to question their claims of moral righteousness when judged negatively by their peers.

Source: UCSD

Findings from a new University of California San Diego Rady School of Management study reveal people often hurt others because in their mind, it is morally right or even obligatory to be violent and as a result, they do not respond rationally to material benefits.

The study has implications for the criminal justice system, suggesting that fines or jail time to penalize bad behavior may not be an effective deterrent as lawmakers hope.

For a majority of offenders, its not worth the trouble to inflict harm purely from a place of cynical greed, said psychologist Tage Rai, an assistant professor of management at the Rady School of Management and author of the study.

For example, as we are seeing with the January 6 hearings, many of the perpetrators of the attack on the Capitol believed the election had been stolen from them and that they were morally in the right to punish the congresspeople who had wronged them.

Many of these people will be materially punished for their actions. Whats unclear is whether that would stop them from doing it again.

Rais findings, published in the journalPsychological Science, are based on multiple experiments with nearly 1,500 study participants. Subjects in an experimental group were paid a monetary bonus to punish others; however, when they were compensated for punishing, it actually made them less likely to do so.

Monetary gains may conflict with their perceived moral justifications, Rai said.

People punish others to signal their own goodness and receiving compensation might make it seem as though theyre driven by greed rather than justice. However, I also find that if your peers tell you youre still a good person even if you take the money, then you no longer have moral qualms about harming others for profit.

Rai added, to prevent criminal acts, lawmakers should leverage social pressure as well.

When people are aware that theyre being judged negatively by their peers, they may find themselves more likely to question their claims of moral righteousness, he said.

Much of Rais research seeks to understand violent behavior and how to prevent it. His previous studies as well as the book he co-authoredVirtuous Violencereveal that most violent criminals have their own notions about what is right and wrong in a given situation.

Knowing that violent offenders often cite their own moral code as the reason why they hurt people, Rai wanted test this theory further by paying people to punish others in a lab experiment.

Across four different experiments in an online economic game, he found providing a monetary bonus for punishing a third party cut participants willingness to do so nearly in half.

The findings suggest people may bemorehesitant to do harm when they stand to profit from it if they anticipate condemnation from their peers, Rai said.

In conclusion, he says understanding what drawspeopleto violence is key to preventing it.

If governments are trying to disincentive criminals, they should also aim to change the moral narratives criminals use to justify their actions, Rai said.

Author: Press OfficeSource: UCSDContact: Press Office UCSDImage: The image is in the public domain

Original Research: Closed access.Material Benefits Crowd Out Moralistic Punishment by Tage S. Rai. Psychological Science

Abstract

Material Benefits Crowd Out Moralistic Punishment

Across four experiments with U.S.-based online participants (N= 1,495 adults), I found that paying people to engage in moralistic punishment reduces their willingness to do so. In an economic game with real stakes, providing a monetary bonus for engaging in third-party punishment of unfair offers nearly cut participants willingness to do so in half.

In judgments of hypothetical transgressions, participants viewed punishers who accepted payment as having worse character and rated the punishers punitive actions as less morally acceptable. Willingness to engage in punishment was restored if participants were offered large enough payments or were told that punishment accompanied by payment still signals moral virtue.

Data were consistent with a signal-corruption mechanism whereby payment interferes with the prosocial signal that moralistic punishment provides about a punishers motives.

These findings have implications for the cultural evolution of punishment and suggest that understanding perpetrators sociomoral incentives is essential to implementing conflict-reduction policies.

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