Rady School of Management, University of California, San Diego.
Psychol Sci. 2022 May;33(5):789-797. doi: 10.1177/09567976211054786. Epub 2022 Apr 29.
Across four experiments with U.S.-based online participants ( = 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 punisher's 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.
在四项针对美国在线参与者（= 1495 名成年人）的实验中，我发现，花钱让人们进行道德惩罚会降低他们这样做的意愿。在一个有实际利害关系的经济游戏中，提供金钱奖励来进行第三方对不公平报价的惩罚，几乎使参与者进行这种行为的意愿减少了一半。在对假设的违规行为的判断中，接受报酬的惩罚者被认为具有更糟糕的品格，并且惩罚者的惩罚行为被评为在道德上不太可接受。如果参与者得到足够大的报酬，或者被告知伴随报酬的惩罚仍然表明道德美德，那么进行惩罚的意愿就会恢复。数据与信号腐败机制一致，即报酬会干扰道德惩罚提供的关于惩罚者动机的亲社会信号。这些发现对惩罚的文化进化具有影响，并表明了解犯罪者的社会道德动机对于实施减少冲突的政策至关重要。
