de Vel-Palumbo Melissa, Twardawski Mathias, Gollwitzer Mario
College of Business, Government and Law, Flinders University, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia.
Department of Psychology, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, Germany.
Br J Soc Psychol. 2023 Jul;62(3):1395-1417. doi: 10.1111/bjso.12638. Epub 2023 Mar 9.
Punishment is expected to have an educative, behaviour-controlling effect on the transgressor. Yet, this effect often remains unattained. Here, we test the hypothesis that transgressors' inferences about punisher motives crucially shape transgressors' post-punishment attitudes and behaviour. As such, we give primacy to the social and relational dimensions of punishment in explicating how sanctions affect outcomes. Across four studies using different methodologies (N = 1189), our findings suggest that (a) communicating punishment respectfully increases transgressor perceptions that the punisher is trying to repair the relationship between the transgressor and their group (relationship-oriented motive) and reduces perceptions of harm-oriented and self-serving motives, and that (b) attributing punishment to relationship-oriented (vs. harm/self-oriented, or even victim-oriented) motives increases prosocial attitudes and behaviour. This research consolidates and extends various theoretical perspectives on interactions in justice settings, providing suggestions for how best to deliver sanctions to transgressors.
惩罚预期会对违规者产生教育和行为控制作用。然而，这种效果往往难以实现。在此，我们检验这样一个假设：违规者对惩罚者动机的推断在很大程度上塑造了违规者受罚后的态度和行为。因此，在阐释制裁如何影响结果时，我们将惩罚的社会和关系维度置于首位。通过四项采用不同方法的研究（N = 1189），我们的研究结果表明：（a）以尊重的方式传达惩罚会增加违规者对惩罚者试图修复违规者与其群体之间关系（关系导向动机）的认知，并减少对伤害导向和利己动机的认知；（b）将惩罚归因于关系导向（相对于伤害/自我导向，甚至受害者导向）的动机，会增加亲社会态度和行为。这项研究巩固并扩展了关于司法环境中互动的各种理论观点，为如何以最佳方式对违规者实施制裁提供了建议。
