Retributive versus compensatory justice: Observers' preference for punishing in response to criminal offenses

In the current paper, the author examines whether independent observers of criminal offenses have a relative preference for either retributive justice (i.e., punishing the offender) or compensatory justice (i.e., compensating the victim for the harm done). In Study 1, results revealed that participants recommended higher sums of money if a financial transaction was framed as offender punishment (i.e., the offender would pay money to the victim) than if it was framed as victim compensation (i.e., the victim would receive money from the offender). In Study 2, participants were asked to gather information about court trials following three severe offenses to evaluate whether justice had been done in these cases. Results revealed that participants gathered more information about offender punishment than about victim compensation. In Study 3 these findings were extended by investigating whether observers' relative preference for punishing is moderated by emotional proximity to the victim. Results revealed that the relative preference for punishing only occurred among participants who did not experience emotional proximity to the victim. It is concluded that observers prefer retributive over compensatory justice, provided that they do not feel emotionally close to the victim. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Getting Even or Getting Equal? Retributive Desires and Transitional Justice

This article examines the effect that different policy interventions of transitional justice have on the desires of the victims of human rights violations for retribution. The retributive desires assessed in this article are conceptualized as individual, collective, and abstract demands for the imposition of a commensurate degree of suffering upon the offender. We suggest a plausible way of reducing victims' retributive desires. Instead of "getting even" in relation to the suffering, victims and perpetrators may "get equal" in relation to their respective statuses, which were affected by political crimes. The article hypothesizes that the three classes of transitional justice: (1) reparation that empowers victims by financial compensation, truth telling, and social acknowledgment; (2) retribution that inflicts punishment upon perpetrators; and (3) reconciliation that renews civic relationship between victims and perpetrators through personal contact, apology, and forgiveness; each contributes to restoring equality between victims and perpetrators, and in so doing decreases the desires that victims have for retribution. In order to test our hypotheses, we conducted a survey of former political prisoners in the Czech Republic. Results from the regression analysis reveal that financial compensation, social acknowledgement, punishment, and forgiveness are likely to reduce victims' retributive desires.     

PUNITIVE JUSTICE AND RESTORATIVE JUSTICE AS SOCIAL RECONCILIATION

The notion of justice is broad and complex. When we pursue justice too harshly after a conflict, we create new injustice and more victims; when we do not, the offenders usually keep hurting others and the violence is prolonged. As a matter of fact, only a few perpetrators can be punished. On the other hand, does punishment of the offender alone heal the victim or restore peace and harmony in society? Moreover, when the victim forgives, should the society still punish the offender? What role do truth recovery, state tribute (paid to the victims) and monetary compensation play in finding the balance between punitive justice and restorative justice? This paper takes up these issues of justice and, while discussing certain aspects of the relationship between punitive justice and restorative justice in some processes of social (national) reconciliation, tries to present some answers.     

Retribution and forgiveness: The healing effects of punishing for just deserts

Although punishment and forgiveness frequently are considered to be opposites, in the present paper we propose that victims who punish their offender are subsequently more likely to forgive. Notably, punishment means that victims get justice (i.e. just deserts), which facilitates forgiveness. Study 1 reveals that participants were more likely to forgive a friend's negligence after being primed with punishment than after being primed with inability to punish. In Study 2, participants were more forgiving towards a criminal offender if the offender was punished by a judge than if the offender escaped punishment, a finding that was mediated by the just deserts motive. Study 3 was in the context of actual recalled ongoing interpersonal relations and revealed that punishment predicted forgiveness indirectly via just deserts, not via victims' vengeful motivations. It is concluded that punishment facilitates forgiveness because of its capacity to restore a sense of justice. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Judgments in a hurry: Time pressure affects how judges assess unfairly shared losses and unfairly shared gains

Human society has evolved to allow third parties—the court system, parents or other societal arbitrators—to punish norm violators and compensate victims. Few studies explore the effect of stress or time pressure on a third‐party judge. Under time pressure, people will likely show a more instinctual reaction or judgment style. We investigated third‐party punishment and compensation within the context of unfairly shared losses and gains in a dictator game under time pressure. Our results show that under no time pressure, participants were inclined to punish dictators who unfairly split windfall gains; however, participants chose to compensate victims more than punish the norm‐violating dictators in the context of unfairly shared losses. With added time pressure, third‐parties were disposed to inflict punishment upon the dictator in both the gain and loss contexts—punishment became the action of choice. Our results shed light on the way observed behavior and stress affect social cognition and decision making in the context of altruistic social interventions and the enforcement of social norms.     

Punishing and compensating others at your own expense: The role of empathic concern on reactions to distributive injustice

When confronted with violations of justice, people may be motivated not only to punish the violator, but also to compensate the victim. Whereas prior research has primarily concentrated on the question of when people are willing to punish, we provide a more comprehensive picture by also studying the willingness to compensate and by assessing the moderating role of empathic concern. Study 1 introduces the altruistic compensation game and shows that especially high empathic (compared to low empathic) people are willing to give up parts of their own resources to financially compensate the victims of distributive injustice. Study 2 completes the picture by directly comparing altruistic compensation with altruistic punishment. The study showed that high empathic people decided to compensate the victim, but low empathic people decided to punish the offender. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

专业背景、主观印象和情绪对量刑决策的影响

为了考察司法决策者对案件当事人的主观印象如何影响刑罚决策及情绪在其中的作用,本研究要求法律与非法律专业被试对案情相同但对案件当事人的主观印象不同的刑事案件进行刑罚强度决策,并要求被试对犯罪行为所引发的情绪强度进行评定。研究结果发现,被试对施害人的消极印象比积极印象条件下产生更强的愤怒和厌恶情绪,更少的同情情绪,同时,给予的刑罚更重;被试对受害人的积极印象比消极印象条件下,低年级组被试对施害人给予的刑罚更重,但在高年级组被试中不存在显著差异,两组被试在情绪强度上也没有显著差异。法律专业比非法律专业被试对犯罪行为所产生的情绪强度更低。被试的专业背景对量刑决策没有显著影响。中介效应检验发现,在施害人的主观印象对刑罚决策的影响过程中,愤怒和同情表现出部分中介效应,厌恶情绪表现出完全中介效应。     

Does successfully changing personality traits via intervention require that participants be autonomously motivated to change?

A growing body of research suggests that personality traits can be changed through intervention. Theorists have speculated that successful interventions may require (1) that participants autonomously choose which traits they change and (2) that they be deeply invested in the change process. The present studies tested these propositions by examining whether interventions to change conscientiousness and emotional stability can be successful when (1) participants are randomly assigned traits to change or (2) they are naïve with respect to the intervention’s target trait. Results indicated that participants could be randomly assigned to change conscientiousness—even if they were unaware that the intervention was targeting conscientiousness. In contrast, interventions targeting emotional stability were effective only if participants both (1) autonomously chose to work on emotional stability and (2) received an effective intervention. These findings have practical implications for designing interventions—and they suggest that different traits may develop via different processes.     

Peace and Justice: A Limited Reconciliation

This paper aims to relax the tension between the political requirements of making peace and the moral demands of doing justice, in light of the ‘peace processes’ in South Africa and Northern Ireland. It begins by arguing that criminal justice should be reconceived as consisting primarily in the vindication of victims, both direct and indirect. This is not to deny the retributive punishment of perpetrators any role at all, only to insist that it be largely subservient to the goal of vindication. Why should we take such an account of justice to be true? The paper offers two reasons. First, Christians – and even secularist liberals – have a prima facie reason in the consonance of this account with the Bible's eudaimonistic conception of justice as ordered to the restoration of healthy community. Second, since all concepts of criminal justice share the basic notion of putting right what is wrong, it would be odd if the repair of damage done to victims (i.e., their ‘vindication’) were not prominent among its concerns; and there are reasons to suppose that this vindication should actually predominate in relation to the other principles of justice (the retributive ‘balancing’ of crime and punishment, and the reform of the criminal for his own sake). In its final sections, the paper applies the proposed conception of criminal justice to the ‘peace processes’ in South Africa and Northern Ireland, and concludes that in both cases, notwithstanding concessions to the politics of peace-making, considerable justice has been done.     

Third-party punishment and symbolic intragroup status

Retributive justice theory has suggested two processes by which punishment is psychologically satisfying to victims of injustice: leveling the power imbalance caused by the transgression and revalidating social consensus over the importance of the rules, norms, and values violated by the offense. The current investigation proposes a third symbolic function that has not yet been identified as a psychological consequence of punishment: confirmation of the victim's membership status in the group (i.e., intragroup standing or respect). Three studies identified perceptions of intragroup membership status as following from third-party punishment, partly explaining the effect of punishment on a victim's group identification. Study 1 showed that, following the experience of an injustice, punishment prevented perceived membership status threats from resulting in victim disidentification. Study 2 showed that third-party desires to punish increased subsequent identification by symbolically communicating the ingroup's regard for the victim, even when the offender did not actually suffer the effects of third-party sanctions. Finally, Study 3 showed that punishment only implied membership status when the act of punishment was instigated by an ingroup authority and was thus identity-relevant. Taken together, these studies offer the first examination of membership status as a relevant concern underlying retributive justice.     

In search of the silver lining: the justice motive fosters perceptions of benefits in the later lives of tragedy victims

Past research has demonstrated that people's need to perceive the world as fair and just leads them to blame and derogate victims of tragedy. The research reported here shows that a positive reaction--bestowing additional meaning on the lives of individuals who have suffered--can also serve people's need to believe that the world is just. In two studies, participants whose justice motive was temporarily heightened or who strongly endorsed the belief that reward and punishment are fairly distributed in the world perceived more meaning and enjoyment in the life of someone who had experienced a tragedy than in the life of someone who had not experienced tragedy, but this pattern was not found for participants whose justice motive was not heightened or who did not strongly endorse a justice belief. These results suggest that being motivated to see the world as just--a motivation traditionally associated with victim derogation--also leads people to perceive a "silver lining" to tragic events.     

The empowering effect of punishment on forgiveness

We examined the process by which punishment enables forgiveness, testing the proposition that punishment restores a sense of justice to victims, an experience that is empowering. In Study 1 (N = 69), university students received insulting feedback and were given the opportunity (or not) to sanction the offender. In Study 2 (N = 91), participants imagined having the opportunity (or not) to recommend punishment for a person who had vandalized their house. A two‐step mediation model (punishment justice restoration empowerment forgiveness) was supported in these two studies. In Study 3 (N = 227), punishment options were expanded to test the role of victim voice in the context of third‐party and personal retributive and restorative justice responses to workplace bullying, as well as taking into account revenge as an alternative to justice restoration. When victims had voice, empowerment again played a central indirect role in relations between punishment and forgiveness.     

Justice through consensus: Shared identity and the preference for a restorative notion of justice

We propose a concept of restorative justice as a sense of justice deriving from consensus about, and the reaffirmation of, values violated by an offence (in contrast to punishment‐based retributive justice). Victims should be more likely to seek restorative justice (and less likely retributive justice) when they perceive to share a relevant identity with the offender. In Study 1, when the relevant identity (university affiliation) shared with the offender was made salient (vs. not), participants found a consensus‐based response more justice‐restoring. In Study 2, when the group (company) shared with the offender was cohesive (vs. not), participants more strongly endorsed a restorative justice philosophy and, mediated by this, responded in consensus‐restoring ways. In Study 3, when the offender was an ingroup (vs. outgroup) member, participants more strongly endorsed a restorative justice philosophy, fully mediated by sadness emotions. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Using the regulation of accuracy to study performance when the correct answer is not known

We examined memory performance in multiple‐choice questions when correct answers were not always present. How do participants answer when they are aware that the correct alternative may not be present? To answer this question we allowed participants to decide on the number of alternatives in their final answer (the plurality option), and whether they wanted to report or withhold their answer (report option). We also studied the memory benefits when both the plurality and the report options were available. In two experiments participants watched a crime and then answered questions with five alternatives. Half of the questions were presented with the correct alternative and half were not. Participants selected one alternative and rated confidence, then selected three alternatives and again rated confidence, and finally indicated whether they preferred the answer with one or with three alternatives (plurality option). Lastly, they decided whether to report or withhold the answer (report option). Results showed that participants’ confidence in their selections was higher, that they chose more single answers, and that they preferred to report more often when the correct alternative was presented. We also attempted to classify a posteriori questions as either presented with or without the correct alternative from participants’ selection. Classification was better than chance, and encouraging, but the forensic application of the classification technique is still limited since there was a large percentage of responses that were incorrectly classified. Our results also showed that the memory benefits of both plurality and report options overlap.     

慢性应激事件对第三方惩罚的影响及其个体差异

本研究以法学和非法学学生为被试,重大考试为慢性应激源,考察意图和结果不同的法律情境下,慢性应激对第三方惩罚的影响。结果发现：(1) 意图清晰度和结果严重程度显著预测惩罚强度;(2) 法学被试中,慢性应激增加惩罚倾向,当案件意图模糊结果轻时,负性情绪在应激和惩罚强度间起中介作用;(3) 应激对第三方惩罚的影响受他人视角下的个体公正敏感性的调节。本研究有助于更好理解应激对社会决策的影响,也为司法实践提供了参考。     

For better or for worse: the congruence of personal and group outcomes on targets' responses to discrimination

This paper reports two studies examining how (in‐) congruence between personal and group outcomes affects emotional well‐being, outcome attributions and procedural justice perceptions of individuals who are exposed to subtle discrimination. In Study 1 (N = 82) participants are either accepted or rejected in a (bogus) job application procedure, and either do or do not receive additional information indicating group‐level disadvantage. In Study 2 (N = 79), participants were either accepted or rejected, and received information indicating either advantage or disadvantage for members of their group. Results of both studies reveal that not only emotional well‐being and outcome attributions, but also procedural justice perceptions are primarily guided by personal outcomes. That is, being informed of group‐level disadvantage does not intensify but can instead alleviate negative affect resulting from personal rejection. Furthermore, group disadvantage is only seen as an indicator of an unjust procedure by individual group members who have personally suffered rejection. Results are discussed in relation to current insights on discrimination, tokenism and social justice. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Severity effect on compensation and imprisonment recommendations: Deterrence as a mediator in Singapore

Severe, compared to mild, harm results in harsher punishment. According to the model of people as intuitive prosecutors, the severity effect is a deterrence message. The authors tested this hypothesis in two studies in Singapore. In Study 1, participants learnt about the severity of harm arising from an accidental or intentional act, and expressed anger, made attributions, assigned blame, recommended compensation by and imprisonment of the offender, and indicated the degree to which they were guided by the punishment goals of deterrence and retribution. As hypothesized, the prosecutorial mindset was multidimensional, and the deterrence goal mediated the severity effect on punishment. In Study 2, the severity effect held when the punishment goal was unspecified but not when it was experimentally specified as deterrence.     

EFFECTS OF REINFORCEMENT FOR ALTERNATIVE BEHAVIOR DURING PUNISHMENT OF SELF-INJURY

A number of variables influence the effectiveness of punishment and may determine the extent to which less intrusive forms of punishment may be used as alternatives to more intrusive interventions. For example, it has been suggested that response suppression during punishment may be facilitated if reinforcement is concurrently available for an alternative response. However, results of basic research demonstrating this finding have not been replicated with interventions more commonly prescribed as treatments for problem behavior. We evaluated the effects of relatively benign punishment procedures (reprimands or brief manual restraint) on the self-injurious behavior of 4 individuals who had been diagnosed with mental retardation, when access to reinforcement for alternative behavior (manipulation of leisure materials) was and was not available. In all cases, punishment produced greater response suppression when reinforcement for an alternative response was available.     

Do innocent victims threaten the belief in a just world? Evidence from a modified Stroop task

Two experiments tested whether innocent victims threaten observers' belief in a just world. In both experiments, participants viewed an innocent victim then performed a modified Stroop task in which they identified the color of several words presented for brief exposures (followed by a mask) on a computer screen. When the threat to justice beliefs was presumably highest, color-identification latencies were greater for justice-related words than for neutral words. In Experiment 2, under conditions of high threat, justice-related interference predicted participants' tendency to disassociate themselves from and derogate the victim. These findings suggest that innocent victims do threaten justice beliefs and responses to these victims may, at times, be attempts to reduce this threat. The methodology presented here may be applied to future investigations of defensive, counternormative processes reflecting people's concern with justice.