Social Psychology Lab, Department of Psychology, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Munich, Germany.
Cognitive Psychology Lab, Department of Psychology, University of Koblenz-Landau, Landau, Germany.
PLoS One. 2020 Nov 9;15(11):e0241919. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0241919. eCollection 2020.
People willingly accept personal costs to sanction norm violations even if they are not personally affected by the wrongdoing and even if their sanctioning yields no immediate benefits-a behavior known as third-party punishment. A notable body of literature suggests that this behavior is primarily driven by retribution (i.e., evening out the harm caused), rather than by the utilitarian motives of special prevention (i.e., preventing recidivism), or general prevention (i.e., preventing imitation). This has led to the conclusion that laypeople are "retributivists" in general. More recent evidence, however, raises doubts about the ubiquity of retributivism, showing that punishment is driven by multiple motives. The present research adds to this debate by investigating the motives underlying punishment in children around age 10. Specifically, we investigate children's (N = 238) punishment motives in an economic game paradigm, isolating punishment motives by experimentally manipulating the extent to which the offender and a bystander learn about the punishment. This offers the possibility to examine whether (and to what extent) children engage in punishment even when it is devoid of any preventive effects. Results show that children's punishment is motivated by retributive, special preventive, and general preventive purposes. These results point to a clear need for further theory specification on the motivational basis of punishment in humans and provide practical implications for the treatment of child misbehavior.
人们愿意为制裁违反规范的行为付出个人代价，即使他们没有受到不当行为的直接影响，即使他们的制裁没有带来即时的好处——这种行为被称为第三方惩罚。大量文献表明，这种行为主要是由报应（即弥补造成的伤害）驱动的，而不是由特殊预防（即防止再犯）或一般预防（即防止模仿）的功利主义动机驱动的。这导致了一个结论，即一般来说，外行人都是“报应主义者”。然而，最近的证据对报应主义的普遍性提出了质疑，表明惩罚是由多种动机驱动的。本研究通过调查 10 岁左右儿童惩罚背后的动机，为这场争论增添了新的内容。具体来说，我们在一个经济博弈范式中调查了儿童的（N = 238）惩罚动机，通过实验操纵罪犯和旁观者了解惩罚的程度来分离惩罚动机。这提供了一种可能性，可以检验儿童是否（以及在何种程度上）会进行惩罚，即使这种惩罚没有任何预防效果。研究结果表明，儿童的惩罚动机是报应、特殊预防和一般预防的目的。这些结果表明，有必要进一步明确人类惩罚的动机基础的理论，为儿童不良行为的治疗提供实际意义。
