PUNISHMENT OF CHILDREN AND ADULTS 1 A person-centered approach to punishment: Reprimand and avoidance are differentially directed towards adult and child transgressors Cindel J.M. White1, Mark Schaller1, Elizabeth G. Abraham2, Joshua Rottman3 1 Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, 2 Department of Teaching & Learning, Florida International University, 3 Department of Psychology, Franklin & Marshall College Author Note This work was supported by a University of British Columbia Faculty of Arts Graduate Research Award, and by funds from the Franklin & Marshall College Committee on Grants, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (Insight Grant 435-2020-1278). We thank Lysa Adams for illustrating the transgressions and Kelly Minard for research assistance. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Cindel J. M. White, Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, 2136 West Mall, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4. Email: [email protected] Declarations of interest: none PUNISHMENT OF CHILDREN AND ADULTS 2 Abstract Three studies (N = 867) investigated how adults’ and children’s punitive responses to moral transgressions differ depending on whether transgressors are adults or children. Adults judged the transgressions of fellow adults as substantially more wrong, and as more worthy of avoidance and punishment, than identical actions performed by children. This difference was partially mediated by the perception that adults’ actions are considered to be more wrong, more harmful, and stranger than children’s identical actions, and by greater anxiety about the negative consequences of confronting adults about their bad behavior. Despite viewing children’s actions as less wrong, adults were more likely to reprimand children than adults who engaged in identical behavior, and this difference became more pronounced when statistically controlling for the wrongness and strangeness of actions. Adults’ nurturant tendencies towards children, as well as their perceptions of children’s moral character as more changeable, also predicted relatively greater reprimand and less avoidance of child transgressors. These differences between reprimand and avoidance of child and adult transgressors was robust to the type of transgression (including harm- and purity-related norms), several individual differences, and a global pandemic. In contrast, 4- to 9-year-old children were equally likely to avoid and reprimand adult and child transgressors, suggesting that different processes are engaged when adults judge children compared to when children evaluate their own peers. Together, these findings indicate how diverse responses to moral transgressions are differentially adapted for norm violators of different ages. Keywords: Moral Judgment; Punishment; Character; Avoidance; Reprimand; Children PUNISHMENT OF CHILDREN AND ADULTS 3 A person-centered approach to punishment: Reprimand and avoidance are differentially directed towards adult and child transgressors 1 Introduction Punishment of norm violations is widespread across human societies. Responses to transgressions come in many varieties, such as physical aggression and other forms of retaliation that directly impose a penalty on transgressors, confrontation and rebukes that aim to encourage transgressors to atone for their misdeeds, and exclusionary tactics (e.g., avoidance, gossip) that indirectly punish transgressors by lowering their social standing (Boehm, 2012; Cushman, 2015). What determines how people will respond to a moral transgression? This paper presents three studies demonstrating that the age of the observer and the age of the transgressor—specifically, whether they are an adult or a child—is an important determinant of how people will respond to norm violations. We show that, even when performing identical actions with identical outcomes, adults’ and children’s transgressions elicit distinct appraisals and emotional responses, resulting in differing desires to reprimand, avoid, and punish. These results are consistent with broad patterns of functional differences between the relationships that adults have with children and with other adults. 1.1 Why do people punish? Punishment signals the condemnation of a transgressor’s action, and thus regulates interpersonal relationships and enforces social norms (Cushman et al., 2019; Ho et al., 2019; Kriss et al., 2016). Thus, punishment can benefit individuals and groups by encouraging future prosocial behavior (Boyd et al., 2003; dos Santos & Wedekind, 2015; Marlowe & Berbesque, 2008) and deterring future harm to oneself (Delton & Krasnow, 2017; Krasnow et al., 2012, 2016). Publicly punishing norm violators can also have reputational benefits for the punisher, PUNISHMENT OF CHILDREN AND ADULTS 4 when it communicates that the punisher disapproves of the transgression and values prosocial, normative conduct (Jordan et al., 2016; Jordan & Rand, 2019). These goals can be variously accomplished by relying on many different varieties of direct and indirect punishment. Choosing which response is most appropriate in a given situation can be partly explained by features of the transgressive action itself. More severe norm violations—those perceived to be more harmful, more intentionally malicious, and generally more wrong—are likely to elicit greater punishment of all sorts (Boehm, 2014). Different types of actions may also elicit different types of responses. For example, actions that are harmful, anger-provoking, and a potential direct threat to oneself may be more likely to elicit direct confrontation and physical aggression towards the transgressor, as the most direct way to deter future transgressions against oneself, whereas violations of standards of bodily and spiritual purity, and other disgust-eliciting actions, may be more likely to elicit avoidance as a means to prevent contamination (physical and metaphorical) by the offender (Kemper & Newheiser, 2018; Kupfer & Giner-Sorolla, 2017; Rottman et al., 2018; Yoder et al., 2016). However, there is good reason to think that features of the transgressor and features of the potential punisher are also important determinates of how people will respond to norm violations, due to the relative costs and benefits of different types of punishment. Just as moral judgments about goodness and badness can be understood as judgments of persons, rather than simply judgments of actions and their consequences (Uhlmann et al., 2015), judgments about the appropriate form for punishment can be also understood by considering the identities of and relationships between punishers and the people who commit moral transgressions. PUNISHMENT OF CHILDREN AND ADULTS 5 1.2 Person-centered influences on direct and indirect punishment Direct punishment—including confronting the transgressor, telling them that they did something wrong, and imposing costs for misbehavior in the form of physical violence, financial sanctions, or other withholding of resources—is often the most effective way to ensure that the transgressor (a) knows that they did something wrong and (b) is disincentivized to offend in the future (Delton & Krasnow, 2017; Krasnow et al., 2012, 2016). Therefore, past research has found that direct punishment (and approach-oriented emotions like anger) is most likely to be deployed when people are most motivated to change the transgressor’s behavior (Tybur et al., 2019), such as when transgressions were committed against oneself (Molho et al., 2017, 2020; Pedersen et al., 2018) or one’s kin (Lopez et al., 2019) rather than strangers. Direct punishment also poses a greater risk to the punisher, if the transgressor decides to retaliate. Fear of retaliation deters confrontation of norm violators (Balafoutas & Nikiforakis, 2012) and direct punishment is therefore more likely when punishers have more power and transgressors have less power (Molho et al., 2020), including factors such as social status and physical strength, such as when punishers are men rather than women (Balafoutas & Nikiforakis, 2012) and when norm violators are women rather than men (Balafoutas et al., 2014). Many of the costs of direct punishment can be mitigated by instead engaging in indirect forms of punishment, such as avoiding the transgressor and excluding them from one’s social network. Indirect punishment (and avoidance-related emotions such as disgust) have therefore been found to be more common when punishers have less power and value offenders less (Molho et al., 2020; Tybur et al., 2019), such as when responding to transgressions against third parties rather than oneself or kin (Lopez et al., 2019; Molho et al., 2017; Pedersen et al., 2018), when the punisher places less value on their relationship with the transgressor, and when there is PUNISHMENT OF CHILDREN AND ADULTS 6 a high threat of future exploitation from the transgressor (Burnette et al., 2012; McCullough et al., 2013, 2013; Smith et al., 2019). Avoidance and expressions of disgust towards the transgressor therefore provide protection from the transgressor, by limiting future social interactions, while additionally serving as a low-cost signal of disapproval of the transgressor’s behavior (Kupfer & Giner-Sorolla, 2017; Yoder et al., 2016). 1.3 Differences between responses to adults’ and children’s norm violations These descriptions of flexibility in functional forms of punishment imply differences in response tendencies for transgressions committed by children as compared to adults. Previous research has investigated