Keshmirian, A., Hemmatian, B., et al.
(2022, March 7). PsyArXiv
https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/sjz7r
Abstract
People assign less punishment to individuals who inflict harm collectively, compared to those who do so alone. We show that this arises from judgments of diminished individual causal responsibility in the collective cases. In Experiment 1, participants (N=1002) assigned less punishment to individuals involved in collective actions leading to intentional and accidental deaths, but not failed attempts, emphasizing that harmful outcomes, but not malicious intentions, were necessary and sufficient for the diffusion of punishment. Experiments 2.a compared the diffusion of punishment for harmful actions with ‘victimless’ purity violations (e.g., eating human flesh in groups; N=752). In victimless cases, where the question of causal responsibility for harm does not arise, diffusion of collective responsibility was greatly reduced—an effect replicated in Experiment 2.b (N= 500). We propose discounting in causal attribution as the underlying cognitive mechanism for reduction in proposed punishment for collective harmful actions.
From the Discussion
Our findings also bear on theories of moral judgment. First, they support the dissociation of causal and mental-state processes in moral judgment (Cushman, 2008; Rottman & Young, 2019; Young et al., 2007, 2010). Second, they support disparate judgment processes for harmful versus "victimless" moral violations (Chakroff et al., 2013, 2017; Dungan et al., 2017; Giner-Sorolla & Chapman, 2017; Rottman & Young, 2019). Third, they reinforce the idea that punishment often involves a "backward-looking" retributive focus on responsibility, rather than a "forwards-looking" focus on rehabilitation, incapacitation, or deterrence (which, we presume, would generally favor treating solo and group actors equivalently). Punishers' future-oriented self-serving motives and their evolutionary roots need further investigation as alternative sources for punishment diffusion. For instance, punishing joint violators may produce more enemies for the punisher, reducing the motivation for a severe response.
Whether the diffusion of punishment and our causal explanation for it extends to other moral domains (e.g., fairness; Graham et al., 2011)is a topic for future research. Another interesting extension is whether different causal structures produce different effects on judgments. Our vignettes were intentionally ambiguous about causal chains and whether multiple agents overdetermined the harmful outcome. Contrasting diffusion in conjunctive moral norm violation (when collaboration is necessary for violation) with disjunctive ones (when one individual would suffice)isinformative, since attributions of responsibility are generally higher in the former class(Gerstenberg & Lagnado, 2010; Kelley, 1973; Lagnado et al., 2013; Morris & Larrick, 1995; Shaver, 1985; Zultan et al., 2012).
