Dataset Information

Diffusion of punishment in collective norm violations.

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 a dead human's flesh as a group; N = 752). In victimless cases, where the question of causal responsibility for harm does not arise, diffusion of collective responsibility was greatly reduced-an outcome replicated in Experiment 2.b (N = 479). Together, the results are consistent with discounting in causal attribution as the underlying mechanism of reduction in proposed punishment for collective harmful actions.

SUBMITTER: Keshmirian A

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9467972 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Diffusion of punishment in collective norm violations.

Keshmirian Anita A Hemmatian Babak B Bahrami Bahador B Deroy Ophelia O Cushman Fiery F

Scientific reports 20220912 1

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 ...[more]

PMID: 36097011

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Project description:Social norms are important for human social interactions, and violations of these norms are evaluated partly on the intention of the actor. Here, we describe the revised Social Norm Processing Task (SNPT-R), a paradigm enabling the study of behavioral and neural responses to intended and unintended social norm violations among both adults and adolescents. We investigated how participants (adolescents and adults, n = 87) rate intentional and unintentional social norm violations with respect to inappropriateness and embarrassment, and we examined the brain activation patterns underlying the processing of these transgressions in an independent sample of 21 adults using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI). We hypothesized to find activation within the medial prefrontal cortex, temporo-parietal cortex and orbitofrontal cortex in response to both intentional and unintentional social norm violations, with more pronounced activation for the intentional social norm violations in these regions and in the amygdala. Participants' ratings confirmed the hypothesis that the three types of stories are evaluated differently with respect to intentionality: intentional social norm violations were rated as the most inappropriate and most embarrassing. Furthermore, fMRI results showed that reading stories on intentional and unintentional social norm violations evoked activation within the frontal pole, the paracingulate gyrus and the superior frontal gyrus. In addition, processing unintentional social norm violations was associated with activation in, among others, the orbitofrontal cortex, middle frontal gyrus and superior parietal lobule, while reading intentional social norm violations was related to activation in the left amygdala. These regions have been previously implicated in thinking about one's self, thinking about others and moral reasoning. Together, these findings indicate that the SNPT-R could serve as a useful paradigm for examining social norm processing, both at the behavioral and the neural level.

Dataset Information

Diffusion of punishment in collective norm violations.

Publications

Diffusion of punishment in collective norm violations.

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