Department of Cognitive, Linguistic, and Psychological Sciences, Brown University, Providence, RI, 02912, USA.
Carney Institute for Brain Science, Brown University, Providence, RI, 02912, USA.
Sci Rep. 2019 Aug 12;9(1):11625. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-48050-2.
Justice systems delegate punishment decisions to groups in the belief that the aggregation of individuals' preferences facilitates judiciousness. However, group dynamics may also lead individuals to relinquish moral responsibility by conforming to the majority's preference for punishment. Across five experiments (N = 399), we find Victims and Jurors tasked with restoring justice become increasingly punitive (by as much as 40%) as groups express a desire to punish, with every additional punisher augmenting an individual's punishment rates. This influence is so potent that knowing about a past group's preference continues swaying decisions even when they cannot affect present outcomes. Using computational models of decision-making, we test long-standing theories of how groups influence choice. We find groups induce conformity by making individuals less cautious and more impulsive, and by amplifying the value of punishment. However, compared to Victims, Jurors are more sensitive to moral violation severity and less readily swayed by the group. Conformity to a group's punitive preference also extends to weightier moral violations such as assault and theft. Our results demonstrate that groups can powerfully shift an individual's punitive preference across a variety of contexts, while additionally revealing the cognitive mechanisms by which social influence alters moral values.
司法系统将惩罚决策委托给群体，相信个人偏好的聚合有助于明智决策。然而，群体动态也可能导致个人通过顺应多数人对惩罚的偏好而放弃道德责任。在五个实验中（N=399），我们发现，当群体表达出惩罚的愿望时，负责恢复正义的受害者和陪审员会变得更加严厉（高达 40%），每增加一个惩罚者都会增加个人的惩罚率。这种影响如此强烈，以至于即使他们不能影响当前的结果，了解过去群体的偏好也会继续影响决策。我们使用决策的计算模型来检验关于群体如何影响选择的长期理论。我们发现，群体通过使个人更加粗心和冲动，并放大惩罚的价值，从而诱导从众。然而，与受害者相比，陪审员对道德违规的严重程度更敏感，也不容易受到群体的影响。对群体惩罚偏好的服从也延伸到更严重的道德违规行为，如攻击和盗窃。我们的研究结果表明，群体可以在各种情境下有力地改变个人的惩罚偏好，同时还揭示了社会影响改变道德价值观的认知机制。
