Abstract
Justice systems delegate punishment decisions to groups in the belief that the aggregation of individuals’ preferences facilitates judiciousness. However, group dynamics may also lead individuals to relinquish moral responsibility by conforming to the majority’s preference for punishment. Across five experiments (N = 399), we find Victims and Jurors tasked with restoring justice become increasingly punitive (by as much as 40%) as groups express a desire to punish, with every additional punisher augmenting an individual’s punishment rates. This influence is so potent that knowing about a past group’s preference continues swaying decisions even when they cannot affect present outcomes. Using computational models of decision-making, we test long-standing theories of how groups influence choice. We find groups induce conformity by making individuals less cautious and more impulsive, and by amplifying the value of punishment. However, compared to Victims, Jurors are more sensitive to moral violation severity and less readily swayed by the group. Conformity to a group’s punitive preference also extends to weightier moral violations such as assault and theft. Our results demonstrate that groups can powerfully shift an individual’s punitive preference across a variety of contexts, while additionally revealing the cognitive mechanisms by which social influence alters moral values.
Highlights
Justice systems delegate punishment decisions to groups in the belief that the aggregation of individuals’ preferences facilitates judiciousness
Since moral values appear to be deeply-held, stable across time, and resistant to change[11,12,13], a parallel literature on moral cognition makes a different prediction: insofar as punishment is a method of restoring justice following a moral violation, punitive preferences should be less susceptible to group influence
Based on classic conformity research showing that individuals are sensitive to the proportion of people within a group who endorse an option in a non-moral context[1], we examined whether victims’ punishment rates scale with the proportion of punitive preferences expressed within a group (Experiment 1)
Summary
Justice systems delegate punishment decisions to groups in the belief that the aggregation of individuals’ preferences facilitates judiciousness. In field studies, moralized attitudes lead to decreased support for political compromise[16] and contribute to the intractability of conflicts in which sacred values are at stake[17] It appears that moral attitudes may be an immutable feature of one’s individual identity[18], and are unwavering across social contexts. Given these divergent predictions, an important goal is to test the susceptibility of moral attitudes—in this case, punishment preferences—to group influence, and to understand the social and cognitive factors that might lead an individual to conform to a group’s desire to punish. Punishment decisions are often made within group contexts[22], and are decided both by those who have been directly affected by a crime (i.e., victims), and by those who are impartial third parties (i.e., jurors)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
