Also consistent with compensatory concerns, Mentawai participants asked that victims be repaid in the currency of their loss—steal a pig, get paid back in pigs, not coconut trees.
Society for Philosophy and Psychology
Human punitive psychology is paradoxical: models say punishment evolved for deterrence, yet people are intuitive retributivists—wanting to "restore a balance," not maximize deterrence. Our solution: retribution restores mutual benefit b/w partners by both compensating victims & deterring offenders.
"contractualism stands on three theoretical pillars that have stood the test of time and enjoyed widespread influence across the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences: social-contract theory, evolutionary theory, and game theory"
We test predictions of this idea with scenarios that pull compensation & deterrence apart.
For example: vary the harm to the victim while holding the offender's gain fixed. Pure deterrence predicts no effect. Yet consistent with compensatory concerns, demands rose with the victim's loss.
But compensation isn't everything. Consistent with deterrence, payments included an additional penalty beyond restitution of the lost resource. As the Mentawai adage goes, sabbek silinia, sabbek tulounia—"one is its exchange, one is its fine." Only accidents required restitution alone.
A bonus, against a popular claim: kinship-intensive societies are said to weigh intentions less in moral judgment. But Mentawai participants, like people in the US, punished accidents far less than intentional harms—same logic on both sides of the planet.
Why do humans punish? Our new paper, with @manvir.bsky.social, is out in Psychological Science!
With experiments in a small-scale society (Mentawai) & the US, we test whether punitive cognition evolved to deter wrongdoing or restore fairness.
link: tinyurl.com/msrmu7cc
pdf: tinyurl.com/mvprz8fb
Research by @lfitouchi.bsky.social & @manvir.bsky.social suggests the tension between (evolutionary) deterrence, and (intuitive) retribution punishment motives is resolved by a model reflecting restoration of mutual benefit between cooperative partners→compensation+deterrence
buff.ly/3T6fdvd
In sum, "deterrence vs. retribution" may be a false choice. Retributive feelings fuse compensation and deterrence into a single computation for restoring fairness. And this looks universal: a built-in feature of our moral psychology rather than a culturally peculiar norm.
