Department of Psychology.
Emotion. 2022 Jun;22(4):795-804. doi: 10.1037/emo0000950. Epub 2021 Mar 4.
The willingness of humans to engage in third-party punishment (TPP)-a lynchpin of our society-critically depends on the interaction between the wrongdoer's intent and the harm that he caused. But what compels us to punish such individuals when we are unaffected by their harms? Inconsistent with the idealized notion that TPP decisions are based on purely cognitive reasoning, intended harmful acts elicit strong emotional reactions in third-party decision makers. While these emotional responses are now believed to be a driving force in TPP decision making, there is debate about what emotions may be motivating this behavior. Here we show that-unlike anger, contempt, and disgust-moral outrage is evoked by the integration of culpable intent and severe harm, and that the expression of moral outrage alone mediates the relationship between this integrative process and punishment decisions. Sadness had the opposite effect of dampening punishment in response to accidental harms. We take these findings to indicate that moral outrage expresses the interaction of intent and harm in driving third-party punishment behavior. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
人类愿意进行第三方惩罚（TPP）——我们社会的关键支柱——极大地取决于违法行为者的意图和他造成的伤害之间的相互作用。但是，当我们不受他们的伤害影响时，是什么促使我们惩罚这些人呢？与 TPP 决策完全基于纯粹认知推理的理想化观念不一致的是，有意的伤害行为会在第三方决策者中引起强烈的情绪反应。虽然这些情绪反应现在被认为是 TPP 决策的驱动力，但对于哪些情绪可能会激发这种行为存在争议。在这里，我们表明，与愤怒、轻蔑和厌恶不同，道德义愤是由应受谴责的意图和严重伤害的整合引起的，而仅仅表达道德义愤就可以调解这种整合过程与惩罚决策之间的关系。悲伤则对因意外伤害而减少惩罚产生了相反的影响。我们认为这些发现表明，道德义愤表达了意图和伤害在驱动第三方惩罚行为中的相互作用。（PsycInfo 数据库记录（c）2022 APA，保留所有权利）。
