Retributive Action Research Articles

Diversity, dissent, and fragmentation in the #MeToo movement: the role of collective and individual dimensions.

In this research, we examine how intragroup fragmentation, which is the division of a group into smaller subgroups, interacts with different forms of action against gender inequality. We focused on two types of action: actions that promote social change and actions that encourage retribution. We investigated these processes within the #MeToo social movement using data collected in Australia (N = 363) and Romania (N = 135). In both samples, we measured antecedents of 'group consciousness' (previous experience with discrimination, empathic concern, and perspective taking) and its indicators (social identification, perceived group efficacy beliefs, and group emotions such as anger and contempt). As indicators of intragroup fragmentation, we measured endorsement of different categories of group behaviors such as pro-social change action versus pro-retribution action. To assess the predictive power of motivations for joining the movement (antecedents of group consciousness) and of group consciousness for either pro-social or retributive actions, we tested several structural equation models (SEMs). Our results indicate that the motivations for joining such social movements were more complex than anticipated, with perspective-taking emerging as a significant differentiator. Our analyses further show that different dimensions of group consciousness could predict support for either pro-social or retributive actions. These findings highlight the complexity of the intragroup processes in newly emerging, modern social movements such as #MeToo. Our findings have implications for the study of membership dynamics in social movements and suggest that strategies to mobilise support should be tailored to these complexities. Overall, this research contributes to the current understanding of intragroup dynamics in contemporary social movements, thereby providing insights that could inform both grassroots mobilisation strategies and policy interventions aiming to increase gender equality.

Implementation of Provisions on Paying for Overtime Work to Employees in the Ministry of Interior Affairs of Republic of North Macedonia

The phenomenon of ill implementation of legal provision pertaining the rights of civil servants is a frequent practice in North Macedonia. Our research is focusing on investigating the allegations for a large-scale breaching of the existing regulation on paying the employees of the Ministry of Interior Affairs i.e., the Police, for the overtime work. We have singled out a total number of 1257 lawsuits filed against the Ministry in the last seven years and performed an in-depth analysis of 41 cases filed against the Ministry by their employees from the Skopje Police Department. We’ve carried out interviews with representatives of the Police Syndicate, representatives from the Ministry and the judiciary. The results revealed that a systematic breaching and nonpaying for the overtime work were in place, exacerbated by retributive actions against those employees who would dare to seek justice in court. The Police Syndicate is encouraging and providing legal counsel to those who decide to take legal actions, and the justice system is showing consistency in ruling against the Ministry in cases where the Ministry failed to remunerate its employees for the overtime work, but the court trials are taking much longer than the legally envisaged framework of 6 months. The outcomes from the legal actions against the Ministry resulted in significant financial loses, and yet no one bore any political or legal responsibility thus far. Based on our findings we will urge the Oversight Committee in the Parliament of North Macedonia to take actions in direction of stopping the practice of not paying to the employees for the overtime work. We will bring to attention to the Ministry of Interior that we and other colleagues from the scientific community are willing to assist in designing instruments and conducting trainings for the commanding officers in order to help them manage the working time of the employees under their command efficiently and within the legally envisaged time frame for work. The research is confluent to the conference topic from the aspect of promoting the adherence to respecting the labor related rights of employees of the public administration as one of the preconditions toward stability and security of the state governing apparatus.
 
 Received: 05 May 2022 / Accepted: 12 June 2023 / Published: 23 July 2023

Threatening experts: Correlates of viewing scientists as a social threat.

Despite widespread trust in scientists, efforts to curtail their influence suggest some Americans distrust scientists and may even perceive them to be a social threat. Using panel survey data, we examine who holds this viewpoint and potential implications of threat perceptions. Results suggest Republicans and Evangelical identifying individuals perceived more social threat from scientists. News media uses were associated with threat perceptions in divergent ways. Threat perceptions were strongly associated with inaccurate science beliefs, support for excluding scientists from policy-making, and retributive actions toward scientists. Findings highlight the importance of social identity considerations amid concerns about partisan social sorting and politicization of science.

CONTESTATION OF CHEMICAL CASTRATION PUNISHMENT FOR CHILD SEX OFFENDERS

Children as national assets must receive significant concerns from their families, neighborhoods, and the state. Based on these circumstances, a variety of regulations are made, including the protection of children from sex offenders. Various arguments, both pro and contra, emerge in the regulation, which provides chemical castration punishment for child sex offenders. The objective of this article is to analyze the contesting of the chemical castration paradigm, both from theoretical and practical dimensions. It used a conceptual and legislative approach, through the analysis of several relevant books and articles as well as the opinions of qualified experts, which were then linked to one another. This paper argued that regardless of human rights perspectives, Indonesia’s future which lies in its future generations must receive more considerable attention. Therefore, the limitation of the perpetrators’ human rights should not be considered a human rights violation. Instead, this castration punishment protects the perpetrators’ human rights from a cruel retributive action from the victims’ family.

Third-party punishment following observed social rejection.

Humans routinely punish others for violating social norms. This behavior is referred to as third-party punishment. Much of the research on this topic has been done in the context of group cooperation and unjust economic interactions. However, little is known about punishment in response to other types of more personal transgressions. In the present study, we sought to determine whether adults would punish an individual after viewing them undeservingly reject a stranger. We experimentally demonstrate that after observing an individual socially reject an unknown victim, individuals will engage in third-party punishment. Individuals who reported feeling upset with the rejecter were most likely to punish, while feeling sorry for the victim was not predictive of punishment behavior. These findings highlight the motivational role of empathic anger in punishing social norm transgressors. Notably, individuals who reported having been bullied in their own pasts were the most likely to punish the rejecter. These results demonstrate how a history of being bullied may make one more attuned to the social rejection of others and in turn may make one more likely to take retributive action on behalf of another. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Off-Duty Deviance in the Eye of the Beholder: Implications of Moral Foundations Theory in the Age of Social Media

Drawing from moral foundations theory, we show that differences in sensitivity to distinct moral norms help explain differences in the perceived (un)fairness of punishing employees for off-duty deviance. We used an initial study to validate realistic examples of non-criminal behavior that were perceived as violating a specific moral foundation. Participants in the main study (n = 166) evaluated scenarios in which co-workers were fired for those behaviors, which took place outside of work but were revealed via social media. The extent to which participants valued the norm violated by the co-worker positively predicted perceived fairness of the firing, and negatively predicted expressed intent to take retributive action against the responsible manager. This effect was moderated by the presence of a pre-existing organizational policy regarding off-duty conduct, which uniformly decreased negative reactions to the firing. Because social media now makes the revelation of an employee’s off-duty behavior to a broad audience increasingly likely, our results suggest the importance of developing an approach for responding to employee off-duty deviance while highlighting the relevance of moral pluralism to the study of third-party reactions.

Is There, If Not Virtue, Any Moral Value to Be Found in Payback?

Can payback, punitive action fueled by the desire to hurt an offending aggressor, ever be justified? In Anger and Forgiveness, Martha Nussbaum emphatically answers “no”, arguing that payback and the anger on which it is based, even following severe loss, distracts one from pursuing the betterment and loving nature one should be striving to cultivate instead. Timothy Jackson admires Nussbaum’s appreciation for such a beautiful spiritual ideal but criticizes her for denying credit to the potential feeler of anger for overcoming the temptation to engage in payback, the initial presence of which is critical for a graceful and triumphant self-transformation. Diana Cates, qualifying Jackson, maintains that we should not assume in payback scenarios that it is suffering that is aimed at, even if the experienced pain of an offender is foreseeable. Granting the worthwhile high road Nussbaum and her respondents seek to travel, one may still ask: is there also a positive case to be made for desiring payback in the extreme case of responding to an egregious offense, i.e., an offense that is violent, paralyzing, and life-altering? Payback will not bring a lost loved one back from the dead, but can it bring oneself back from the dead? This essay explores the merits of this possibility, honing in on the therapeutic aspect of the desire—and occasionally the acting out of the desire—for a victim to pay her aggressor back in kind. Drawing on the work of the Christian realist Reinhold Niebuhr, the Judaic thinker and Holocaust survivor Primo Levi, and the Christian ethicist and feminist Giles Milhaven, I argue that while no moral principle ever ought to be adopted out of retributive action—such action is by definition bereft of virtue—we should nevertheless not dismiss too quickly the notion of there being any moral value in desiring payback, for desiring payback might be an egregiously offended victim’s only alternative to the paralysis induced by malice. On this exceptional basis, payback strictly limited to its therapeutic scope may become, for the sake of preserving self-worth, not only tolerable, but a victim’s most preferable alternative.

ALGUNAS CONSIDERACIONES SOBRE LA TIPICIDAD DEL ACOSO LABORAL EN LA LEGISLACIÓN ECUATORIANA

El siguiente artículo tiene el objetivo de mostrar algunas consideraciones sobre la tipicidad del acoso laboral (mobbing) en la legislación ecuatoriana. En consonancia con ello, la estrategia metodológica asumida se sustenta en los métodos de investigación: revisión documental, histórico–lógico, hermenéutico y analítico-sintético. Sobre esta base, los hallazgos realizados permiten aseverar que, aunque en el Ecuador se han dado pasos para prevenir el acoso laboral e introducir instrumentos para su erradicación, aún existe un vacío en el orden jurídico penal que tipifique esta conducta y decrete las sanciones para el acosador. Asimismo, se establezcan acciones restaurativas y retributivas de reivindicación al acosado.

Key Challenges in the Combat of Human Trafficking: Evaluating the EU Trafficking Strategy and EU Trafficking Directive

The problem of trafficking in human beings (THB) is still omnipresent in Europe, despite the numerous preventive and retributive actions taken. This article evaluates the two most important EU-instruments to combat trafficking: the EU Directive and the EU Strategy. Based on secondary analysis of reports, policy reviews and scholarly writings from organisations, EU institutions and academics, key challenges in combating human trafficking are identified and an evaluation of the extent to which these instruments have addressed these challenges is made. The key challenges are subdivided following the three-P paradigm (prosecution, protection and prevention) and are the following: defining THB, non-punishment, low number of persons convicted of THB, corporate liability, identification of THB and victims of THB, conditional protection, prevention and neglect of vulnerable groups. In addition a multi-disciplinary approach and the current migration flow were identified as key challenges and the two instruments are also evaluated on these aspects.

Displacing blame over the ingroup's harming of a disadvantaged group can fuel moral outrage at a third-party scapegoat

Integrating research on intergroup emotions and scapegoating, we propose that moral outrage toward an outgroup perceived to be unjustly harming another outgroup can represent a motivated displacement of blame that reduces collective guilt over ingroup harm-doing. We tested this hypothesis by manipulating the purported cause of working-class Americans' suffering (ingroup cause vs. unknown cause vs. outgroup cause) and whether a potential scapegoat target (i.e., illegal immigrants) was portrayed as a viable or nonviable alternative source of this harm. Supporting hypotheses, participants primed with ingroup culpability for working-class harm (versus other sources) reported increased moral outrage and support for retributive action toward immigrants when immigrants were portrayed as a viable source of that harm, but reported increased collective guilt and support for reparative action when immigrants were portrayed as a nonviable source of that harm. Effects on retributive and reparative action were differentially mediated by moral outrage and collective guilt, respectively.

Transferable Disgust in Demosthenes 54: Against Conon

Demosthenes 54: Against Conon concerns a savage attack on Ariston, a young Athenian, by Conon and his sons. Throughout the oration Demosthenes directs the jury's attention to sordid and visceral aspects (mud, blood, illness, vomit) of the ordeal in an attempt to win support for his case by appealing to the jury's disgust response, part of their "moral equipment" with which they will judge the seriousness of the crime. This analysis of Against Conon focuses on how images of disgusting substances are transferred rhetorically from victim to defendant as a retributive action.

When being disadvantaged grows into vengeance: The effects of asymmetry of interest and social rejection in social dilemmas

AbstractIn public good dilemmas, group members often differ in the extent to which they benefit from provision of the public good (asymmetry of interest). In the current paper, we argue that people may readily accept such financial differences in interest when their social needs are met by being accepted by the others. When people are socially rejected, however, members having a low rather than a high interest in the public good may display negative emotional and retributive reactions. This reasoning was supported by the findings of a first experimental study in which we manipulated people's interest in the public good and social rejection. These effects were replicated in a second experimental study and it was further shown that this two‐way interaction between social rejection and interest in the public good was moderated by people's social value orientation. The negative reactions to low interest (vs. high interest) in the public good when being socially rejected were especially prominent among group members with a proself orientation. Taken together, the current studies illustrate the importance of studying how financial and social needs interact to determine emotional and retributive actions in social dilemmas. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Sentiments as Culturally Constructed Emotions: Anger and Love in the Hebrew Bible

AbstractThis article explores the language of the sentiments of anger and love in biblical Hebrew, English and Japanese, where sentiments are defined as emotions that are culturally defined and organized. Its leading questions are: To what extent do people in different societies experience the same and different emotions because of their cultural backgrounds? And what does language reveal about emotional thought and its cultural construction in the Hebrew Bible? It is argued that anger in biblical texts is related to the mouth, nose or face and expresses an uncontrollable fury in someone's head that leads prototypically to retributive actions. It is also argued that the love between a man and a woman in the Hebrew Bible is conceptualized as love of a man for a woman. The semantic values of both sentiments seem to materialize in a hierarchical framework of thinking. Emotions may break in into generally accepted hierarchical structures: anger may get hold of someone and love can defy determined positions. Nonetheless, cultural conventions are developed and used to defend the hierarchical order as a natural order. This explains why women are never said to be angry in the Hebrew Bible, and why it is only rarely expressed that a woman loves a man.

Managing Equality in Social Dilemmas: Emotional and Retributive Implications

The equality rule is an important coordination rule in symmetric public good dilemmas. Although prior research emphasized that people use the equality rule out of efficiency concerns (as it helps to obtain the public good in the most efficient manner among group members), it may also reflect a true preference for fairness. More precisely, research examining emotional and retributive reactions as a result of a violation of the equality rule by a fellow group member showed that equality indeed is related to people’s personal values and what they consider to be fair. The present paper suggests that a violation of the equality rule results in emotional reactions, and these emotional experiences encourage further retributive actions. The different reactions following an equality violation are described as a function of three features: (1) the motives to use equality, (2) attributions for explaining the violation, and (3) the honesty of the given explanation.

Decolonizing the 1862 Death Marches

In November of 1862 approximately 2,10o Dakota men, women, and children were forcibly moved in two groups from the Lower Sioux Agency to concentration camps at either Fort Snelling or Mankato, events which marked the first phase of expulsion of our Dakota people from our homeland of Minisota Makoce (Land Where the Waters Reflect the Skies).' These two groups were paying the severest of penalties for the retributive actions of Dakota people who dared to fight the Wasicu (white) invaders, who dared to fight because they could not take any more offenses, who dared to fight because they were pushed to desperation and there appeared to be no other options. This article will examine existing accounts regarding these removals from a critical perspective within the broader framework of colonialism. Furthermore, it will discuss the necessity of truth telling and remembering in our commemoration of the removals to the achievement of healing and restoration of well-being among Dakota people. When examined within a framework of colonization, the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862 is just one point on a continuum that carries through to the present day, but it also provides a possibility of change for the future. At the most basic level it challenges the narrative that seeks to justify policies of invasion, forced removal, and genocide. In doing so the narrative immediately shifts from one of white innocence and Dakota guilt to one of white oppression and Dakota subjugation. On the topic of violence and oppression, Brazilian liberationist educator Paulo Freire wrote:

Attributional Thoughts about Consumer Behavior

Two fundamental principles from attribution theory were examined for the role they might play in the psychology of the consumer. They are: (1) perceptions of causality along a stability dimension influence the anticipated likelihood of product satisfaction, and (2) perceptions of causality along a controllability dimension influence judgments of responsibility and retributive actions. Comments about the longevity of an attributional framework, methodological recommendations, and the heuristic value of the theory also are included.

The 1866 Grain Riots in Sri Lanka

Until fairly recently, grain riots were viewed as spontaneous reactions of the poor to hunger, not worthy of detailed analysis. Over the past twenty years, partially as a result of pioneering studies by George Rudé and Edward Thompson with reference to France and Britain, a considerable body of scholarly writing about these disturbances has appeared. Consistent cross-cultural patterns have emerged from this research. Grain riots were not necessarily a product of hunger, although they were a facet of struggles over the control of food. They have normally taken one of two forms. One was the market riot, where the crowd protested against the price or lack of availability of grain. Such disturbances often commenced with the offer to buy grain at a “just” or “customary” price. If this demand was not met, more drastic action was taken. Sometimes rioters seized grain and sold it to the crowd for a just price, and then turned the receipts over to the owners of the grain. More often grain was strewn about, destroyed, or stolen. The second main form of grain riot was the blockade. In times of shortage, people prevented the export of grain from a town or district because they believed that merchants and landlords should not benefit from scarcity and that such exports would drive up the price locally. Sometimes retributive action accompanied or followed both types of protest, meting out punishment to traders, landlords, or others who were perceived as wrongly profiting from food shortages. Such action usually took the form of wholesale looting. In general, grain rioters avoided serious violence.