Introduction
In the last two decades, a growing body of research has been dedicated to investigating the goals of individuals’ third-party punishment behavior, that is, people engaging in punishment who are not personally affected by the wrongdoing (Fehr & Fischbacher,
2004). This research is inextricably associated with the philosophical works of Immanuel Kant and Jeremy Bentham that provide disparate approaches in justifying the intrinsically destructive act of punishment. According to Kant (
1952), the primary reason for punishment of criminal offenders is to rebalance the moral wrong that has been committed by the offense. This punishment philosophy is referred to as
retribution. A retributive sentence is proportionate to the (intended) harm of the specific wrong committed. Thus, according to Kant, a legitimate sentencing lets the ‘punishment fit the crime.’ As punishment in this regard is only concerned with the past misbehavior, it is construed as a backward-oriented punishment (Goodwin & Gromet,
2014; Keller, Oswald, Stucki, & Gollwitzer,
2010; Tetlock,
2002). In other words, adopting a retributive perspective necessitates one to focus on elements of the past, for instance, by determining the seriousness of the offense.
By contrast, Bentham (
1962) considered the act of punishment from a more utilitarian view on people’s behavior. Accordingly, the intrinsically bad act of punishment can only be seen as justified if it leads to good consequences, for example by preventing future misbehavior. As punishment in this regard is only concerned with future consequences, it is construed as a forward-oriented punishment (Goodwin & Gromet,
2014; Keller et al.,
2010; Tetlock,
2002). In other words, adopting a utilitarian principle necessitates one to attempt to predict the future, for instance, by determining a punishment’s capacity to prevent transgressions in the future. Utilitarian punishment can further be differentiated into
special prevention and
general prevention (Goodwin & Benforado,
2015; Keller et al.,
2010; Rucker, Polifroni, Tetlock, & Scott,
2004; Tetlock,
2002; Twardawski, Hilbig, & Thielmann,
2020). Special preventive punishment is primarily concerned with the offenders themselves, by attempting to prevent future recidivism through rehabilitative measures or incapacitation (Keller et al.,
2010), whereas general preventive punishment is primarily concerned with other members of the society that might have been informed of the offense and, therefore, may imitate the misbehavior if it goes unpunished (Goodwin & Benforado,
2015).
Although punishment goals are not necessarily mutually exclusive and people view the satisfaction of multiple goals as an appropriate and just response to wrongdoing (Gromet & Darley,
2009), a great body of research on laypeople’s punishment goals has dealt with the question on whether there is a
primary objective in punishment behavior (i.e., whether people primarily punish for retributive or utilitarian purposes). This research demonstrated an apparent consensus: Punishment, it appears, is predominantly driven by retribution (i.e., to even out the wrong that has been done) rather than special or general prevention (i.e., to prevent future crimes by the offender or others; Carlsmith,
2006; Carlsmith, Darley, & Robinson,
2002). This has led researchers to conclude that ‘people are intuitive retributivists’ (Carlsmith & Darley,
2008, p. 211; see also Carlsmith,
2006; Carlsmith et al.,
2002; Giacomantonio & Pierro,
2014; Goodwin & Gromet,
2014; Keller et al.,
2010).
Crucially, however, there is a growing body of evidence suggesting that laypeople’s punishment goals are context dependent and influenced by diverse factors such as the personality of the punisher (Giacomantonio & Pierro,
2014; Giacomantonio, Pierro, Baldner, & Kruglanski,
2017) or specific aspects of the crime itself (e.g., the severity of the misbehavior, with more severe crimes leading to more retributive punishment; Gromet & Darley,
2006). Furthermore, the attribution of the misbehavior also affects individuals’ punishment goals (Weiner, Graham, & Reyna,
1997); attribution of the misbehavior to a more controllable cause leads to more retributive punishment (and vice versa), whereas attribution to a more unstable cause leads to more special preventive punishment (and vice versa). This research demonstrates that laypeople’s punishment is motivated by utilitarian purposes to varying degrees, depending on a variety of other factors.
In the present research, we add to this literature by investigating the influence of information salient about a crime situation on laypeople’s punishment goals. The rationale of our research is based on the ‘isolation effect’ (McCaffery & Baron,
2006, p. 289), suggesting that individuals tend to focus on salient cues while ignoring others and importantly, generally pay relatively little attention to secondary or long-term effects of their decision-making. Such a neglect of long-term effects of decisions has also been found in punishment behavior. For example, recent research has shown that individuals generally do not incorporate the costs of incarceration into their punishment preferences, unless information about such costs is made explicitly salient (Aharoni, Kleider-Offutt, Brosnan, & Watzek,
2018). Given that the support for utilitarian punishment requires, by definition, a forward-oriented thinking about punishment (i.e., taking long-term effects into account), punishers may only consider pursuing such punishment goals if information related to utilitarian aspects of the crime situation is salient. In other words, so long as only aspects associated with retribution (i.e., enabling to evaluate the appropriateness of a punishment with regard to a retributive approach) are salient, it must be expected that people’s punishment is mostly driven by a retributive thinking.
Indeed, some aspects of a crime situation are more relevant for a particular punishment goal than for others (Carlsmith,
2006; Keller et al.,
2010). In particular, retributive punishment is associated with aspects of the crime itself (such as the magnitude of harm caused by the criminal behavior); special prevention is associated with aspects of the offender (such as the probability of recidivism); and general prevention is associated with aspects of the community the crime occurred in (such as the public awareness of the crime and sentencing). Importantly, there is also some evidence suggesting that information salience influences laypeople’s punishment goals, as future-oriented punishment goals received higher support in studies in which utilitarian-related aspects of the crime situation were more salient to participants (Baron & Ritov,
2009). More precisely, this research has shown that people generally ignore the probability of detection of an offense in judgments of punishment, unless when specifically instructed to consider potential negative consequences of this ignorance. Similarly, research instructing participants to focus on specific aspects of the description of a crime situation showed that altering individuals’ perspective on a crime situation changes the goals they intend to achieve with their punishment (Gromet & Darley,
2009). In this study, participants were asked to read a scenario about a crime and indicate their punishment goals. Subsequently, they were asked to re-read the same scenario, but were explicitly told to focus on a specific target of the crime situation (i.e., the offender, the victim, or the community in which the crime occurred), and then indicate their punishment goals again. As predicted, participants’ punishment goals shifted depending on the target they were asked to focus on.
Taken together, it is clearly implied that if aspects other than the crime itself are salient (e.g., the offender’s motives or the community in which the crime has taken place), individuals are able to incorporate this information in their decision-making and adjust their punishment to achieve other, non-retributive goals. By contrast, if people do not receive any information about associated aspects other than the crime itself (or if such utilitarian-related information is not salient to them), their punishment decision must appear primarily retributive, even if utilitarian goals may have been applicable in principle.
To test this prediction, we conducted two preregistered experiments and varied the salience of aspects of the crime situation that have been shown to be associated with three broad punishment goals: retribution, special prevention, and general prevention. Our predictions were based on research in which participants indicated that some aspects of a crime situation are more relevant for a particular punishment goal than for others: Aspects of the crime itself are most relevant for retributive punishment; aspects of the offender are most relevant for special prevention; and aspects of the community the crime occurred in are most relevant for general prevention (Carlsmith,
2006; Keller et al.,
2010). Our main prediction is that in a crime situation in which all punishment goals are eligible in principle, the support for retribution, special prevention, and general prevention as goals of punishment depends on the salience of aspects of the crime itself, the offender, and the community in which the crime occurred, respectively. Specifically, we hypothesized that in such a crime situation, increasing the salience of information about the crime itself will increase the endorsement of retribution as a punishment goal; increasing the salience of information about the offender will increase the endorsement of special prevention as a punishment goal; and increasing the salience of information about the community the crime occurred in will increase the endorsement of general prevention as a punishment goal. These hypotheses were preregistered as outlined above (both preregistrations are available online on the Open Science Framework (OSF) and can be accessed via the following links:
https://osf.io/v8e9t and
https://osf.io/7mqp8). Additional materials (including the instructions and materials used in our preliminary studies and both experiments, along with all data and supplementary analyses) are also available on the OSF and can be accessed via the following links:
https://osf.io/dba47 and
https://osf.io/hfnp8.
We tested these hypotheses in two experiments with different online samples (recruited through the Amazon Mechanical Turk website and various other research platforms and personal contacts), different designs (between- and within-subjects manipulation of information salience), and different approaches to measure participants’ punishment goals. Specifically, we used a direct endorsement measure of punishment goals, asking participants to indicate the degree to which they endorse retribution, special prevention, and general prevention as different goals of punishment in the described situation. However, past research has repeatedly revealed rather weak correlations between participants’ explicit endorsement of punishment goals and their actual punishment behavior. Specifically, it appears that laypeople highly endorse
all goals of punishment and generally overestimate the influence of utilitarian goals on their own punishment decisions, although their actual punishment
behavior is mostly retributive (Carlsmith,
2008; Crockett, Özdemir, & Fehr,
2014). Consequently, it is important to consider additional, less direct or explicit measures of punishment goals. We therefore additionally implemented a more indirect measure of punishment goals that provides participants with specific punishment reactions (which may serve certain goals without stating these goals explicitly) with the task of choosing from (Experiment 1) or rating the appropriateness of (Experiment 2) these reactions. To the extent that the reactions are known to differ on how well they serve different punishment goals, one can consider participants’ behavior (i.e., choice or appropriateness rating) as an indirect measure of their punishment goals, without requiring them to introspectively predict the exact goals they may be intending to achieve. For both experiments, we report how we determined our sample size, all data exclusions (if any), manipulations, and measures (Simmons, Nelson, & Simonsohn,
2012).
General Discussion
Most literature on punishment goals suggests that laypeople’s punishment intentions are best described as primarily retributive, rather than occurring for utilitarian purposes such as special prevention or general prevention; this has fostered the belief that ‘people are intuitive retributivists’ (Carlsmith & Darley,
2008, p. 211; see also Carlsmith,
2006; Carlsmith et al.,
2002; Giacomantonio & Pierro,
2014; Goodwin & Gromet,
2014; Keller et al.,
2010). However, there is a growing body of evidence suggesting that laypeople’s punishment goals are context dependent and influenced by a variety of factors (e.g., Giacomantonio & Pierro,
2014; Giacomantonio et al.,
2017; Weiner et al.,
1997). The present research adds to this by investigating the influence of information salient about a crime situation on laypeople’s punishment goals. Accordingly, in two preregistered experiments applying both a between-subjects design and within-subjects design, we gave participants a description of a crime situation in which all punishment goals are eligible in principle, but manipulated the salience of specific aspects in the description of this situation: the offender, the community in which the crime occurred, and the crime itself. Participants were asked to choose from (Experiment 1) or rate the appropriateness of (Experiment 2) different reactions to the crime situation; these reactions were pretested for the degree to which they served each of the punishment goals: special prevention, general prevention, and retribution. As hypothesized, we found that participants’ punishment goals were associated with the salience of specific aspects of the crime situation. More specifically, (1) the special preventive reaction was more likely to be selected and rated as more appropriate when information about the offender of the crime was salient. In turn, (2) the general preventive reaction was more likely to be selected and rated as more appropriate when information about the community the crime occurred in was salient. Finally, (3) the retributive reaction was more likely to be selected and rated as more appropriate when information about the crime itself was salient.
Although we found this fairly clear pattern of results when indirectly measuring participants’ punishment goals, the results were more mixed for a direct endorsement rating measure (in Experiment 1): There was no evidence for retribution and special prevention as punishment goals, that is, retribution and special prevention were rated as equally important no matter which information of the crime was salient. However, we only found the expected association for general prevention, which was rated as more important in the community focused condition than in the crime focused and the offender focused conditions. These somewhat mixed results may have been caused by unintended differences between the conditions regarding the perceived stability of the cause of the crime and the perceived severity of the misbehavior in Experiment 1, as indicated on the control variables. These differences worked against our hypotheses and thus made our tests more conservative (i.e., it was more difficult to detect the expected effects). Nonetheless, we found patterns complementing our hypotheses for the second dependent variable by measuring participants’ punishment goals with a more indirect approach. We therefore deem the resulted patterns as interpretable despite the unexpected differences complicating the detection of the effects.
The mixed results found in Experiment 1 may also be due to general problems in measuring participants’ endorsement of punishment goals by directly asking them to indicate the motivations underlying their punishment behavior, a problem that has already been documented in past research (e.g., Crockett et al.,
2014). In fact, our participants indicated that they strongly endorsed all three punishment goals, leading to an overall ceiling effect of endorsement that has also been observed in past work (Carlsmith,
2008). This corroborates the previous conclusion that people are largely unaware of their punishment goals and particularly overestimate the influence of utilitarian goals on their own punishment decisions, which results in weak correlations of introspective self-ratings on punishment goals and actual punishment behavior (Applegate, Cullen, Turner, & Sundt,
1996; Carlsmith,
2008; Crockett et al.,
2014).
Such differences between people’s stated and actually pursued punishment goals beg the question whether both approaches (i.e., direct and indirect measures) actually target the very same construct. If so, one may ask which is the more valid way of measurement. If not, one may ask which constructs are actually represented in such measures, as this may have far-reaching implications for prior and future research using such approaches. In any case, our results corroborate past evidence (Carlsmith,
2008), suggesting two rather different representations of punishment goals that do not necessarily correlate perfectly. That is, as also shown in other domains of research in morality and justice-related decision-making, it appears that people fundamentally differ in their abstract versus concrete ways of thinking (Nichols & Knobe,
2007). In the context of punishment, people are consistently more willing to support utilitarian purposes when thinking in the abstract, whereas they are more willing to support retribution when it comes to a concrete case of punishment. Future research may further scrutinize the differences between punishment goals in abstract versus concrete situations of misbehavior, for example, by using the continuous indirect measure of people’s punishment goals we applied in Experiment 2, along with a direct measure (e.g., the one we applied in Experiment 1).
On a substantive level, our results confirm that the focus inherent in the description of a specific crime situation has an influence on laypeople’s punishment goals. This also adds to research raising awareness about how the methodological approaches used to study punishment goals in the past may have influenced researchers’ assessment of the motivational basis of laypeople’s punishment (e.g., Goodwin & Benforado,
2015). Consequently, the present research supports the development of using more diverse methodological approaches to study the underlying motivational basis of punishment behavior, such as economic games (Crockett et al.,
2014) or scenario studies about the punishment of animals (Goodwin & Benforado,
2015). In addition, there is research applying more indirect approaches such as the information selection paradigm (Carlsmith,
2006; Keller et al.,
2010). In these studies, participants received minimal information about a crime and were asked to make a punishment decision. Prior to their decision, they were given the chance to ask questions about the crime context. It has been shown that individuals were primarily interested in aspects of the crime itself (e.g., the magnitude of harm) rather than other aspects of the crime situation (e.g., information about the offender). Hence, laypeople actively search for retribution-associated aspects rather than factors that are associated with utilitarian punishment and therefore may ‘intuitively’ focus on the crime itself when asked to propose a punishment.
Nonetheless, our findings suggest that if people’s attention is drawn to other aspects of the crime situation (e.g., the offender’s motives or the community in which the crime occurred), they are able to incorporate this information into their decision-making and consider potential secondary (i.e., utilitarian) effects of their punishment behavior, if appropriate. However, if this information is not salient, individuals tend to focus on a backward-oriented, retributive punishment, without considering potential long-term effects of their decision-making (Baron & Ritov,
2009; McCaffery & Baron,
2006). This is also in line with studies showing that people’s punishment goals shift once they are explicitly told to focus on a specific target of the crime situation (Gromet & Darley,
2009). Importantly, the present research goes beyond these insights as we applied a more subtle experimental manipulation by varying the salience of the presumably relevant aspects of the scenario describing a crime situation within the material itself, rather than providing explicit instructions to participants.
Thus, our results may be a next step to understanding the processes underlying individuals’ punishment behavior, suggesting that it strongly depends on the information environment as has been argued and found in many other domains of judgment and decision-making (e.g., Fiedler,
2000,
2008). In any case, further research is needed to explore the processes of punishment decision-making. For example, future research may apply more enriched methodological approaches (e.g., eye tracking) to investigate which features of a crime situation are naturally most relevant for a punishment decision and, hence, become more salient to punishers which may drive their punishment goals and preferences.
In both studies, we also found a general overall preference for a special preventive reaction to the criminal situation across conditions. This is surprising at first glance, since it contrasts with most research suggesting retribution as the primary goal of individuals’ punishment. However, it may be attributed to the general structure and content of our material, that is, the intended equivalence across conditions: We created the material to be equivalent regarding the perceived severity of the crime and the attribution of the criminal behavior described in the scenario in terms of the controllability and stability of the cause of the criminal behavior. Additionally, the scenarios were created to ensure that all three punishment goals are eligible in principle, that is, if one carefully considers all information of the crime situation, all punishment goals should be highly supported. To achieve this, we chose a crime scenario in which participants were likely to attribute the misbehavior to rather unstable causes. Prior research has already shown that this attribution results in stronger endorsement of special prevention as a punishment goal (Weiner et al.,
1997) and thus can explain the general preference for special prevention in our findings.
It should be acknowledged that we only focused on one specific crime situation, a burglary, which was detailed in a very particular way (e.g., providing mitigating circumstances for the offender’s behavior). Therefore, we cannot generalize the effects of information salience on punishment goals demonstrated in our research as applicable to all scenarios describing crimes. Indeed, this also depends on the particular aspects of the crime situation itself, such as attributional processes or the magnitude of harm. By focusing on a specific type of crime, we aimed to increase the consistency of the perceived severity of the misbehavior, as well as the attribution of it (as also assured through extensive pretesting of the materials used), since this has already been shown to affect people’s punishment goals (Gromet & Darley,
2006; Weiner et al.,
1997). Given the association of crime severity, attributional processes, and punishment goals, future research may investigate whether information salience can also influence laypeople’s punishment goals for less or more severe crimes that are attributed differently in terms of the stability and controllability its cause. For example, one may speculate that it is much more difficult to direct people’s attention to other aspects of the crime situation (e.g., the community) when the offense is of extreme severity, such as rape or murder. Furthermore, it is presumably unlikely to make people aim for rather long-term, future-oriented effects of punishment decisions (e.g., special prevention) if the information about the offender portrays them as intrinsically malicious.
Relatedly, by manipulating the salience of specific aspects of the crime situation, we provided participants with additional information that differed across conditions. This may arguably imply the limitation that the content of this additional information, rather than the salience of crime aspects, may have driven the results. Importantly, however, we carefully created and pretested all materials to rule out such a threat to the validity of our results. As such, all scenario versions consisted of a main paragraph providing participants with basic information about the crime, the offender, and the community. Although each condition also consisted of a second paragraph making specific aspects of the crime situation more salient, this did not add any information to different scenario conditions that may have influenced the perception of the crime situation on dimensions known to be associated with people’s punishment goals (as shown in the second preliminary study). Consequently, we are confident in the interpretation that the results yielded provide further evidence for the suggested association of information salience and laypeople’s punishment goals.
Finally, the results of the present research also raise questions about the importance of other punishment goals. One increasingly discussed punishment goal is that of restorative justice, which attempts to restore the victim, reintegrate the offender, and repair the harm that has been caused to the community by the misbehavior (Gromet & Darley,
2006). One key element of restorative justice processes is a face-to-face meeting involving all parties: the victim, the offender, and other community members. In this meeting, the offender and the victim present their perspectives on the misbehavior and using a consensus decision-making approach, work out an appropriate punishment for the offender with participation from all parties (this usually involves an apology, a monetary compensation, community services, and the like). As the perspective and voice of the victim are an important factor for restorative punishment, the salience of this aspect could have an influence on laypeople’s support for this punishment goal. However, as the offender’s and the community’s perspectives are also considered in restorative punishment processes, research is needed to investigate which aspects are particularly important for this punishment goal and thus may be highlighted to make people strive for restorative justice.
In conclusion, our research confirms that laypeople’s support for different punishment goals is affected by the salience of different aspects of an article describing a crime situation. That is, if information about the crime situation focuses on aspects other than the crime itself, people consider this information in their decision-making process and, if appropriate, pay greater attention to achieving more utilitarian goals with their punishment. In other words, laypeople are not able to consider utilitarian punishment goals if they receive no information about the need for, nor the usefulness of potential future-oriented punishment reactions; such relevant information needs to be salient in order to enable an equal chance for utilitarian (vs. retributive) punishment to be adequately considered.