title: Brutality under cover of ambiguity: activating, perpetuating, and deactivating covert retributivism.
abstract: Five studies tested four hypotheses on the drivers of punitive judgments. Study 1 showed that people imposed covertly retributivist physical punishments on extreme norm violators when they could plausibly deny that is what they were doing (attributional ambiguity). Studies 2 and 3 showed that covert retributivism could be suppressed by subtle accountability manipulations that cue people to the possibility that they might be under scrutiny. Studies 4 and 5 showed how covert retributivism can become self-sustaining by biasing the lessons people learn from experience. Covert retributivists did not scale back punitiveness in response to feedback that the justice system makes false-conviction errors but they did ramp up punitiveness in response to feedback that the system makes false-acquittal errors. Taken together, the results underscore the paradoxical nature of covert retributivism: It is easily activated by plausible deniability and persistent in the face of false-conviction feedback but also easily deactivated by minimalist forms of accountability.
authors.affiliation: University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA katrinaf@sas.upenn.edu.
authors.forename: Katrina M
authors.initials: KM
authors.lastname: Fincher
authors.affiliation: University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA.
authors.forename: Philip E
authors.initials: PE
authors.lastname: Tetlock
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003657:Decision Making; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D007600:Judgment; D008297:Male; D011678:Punishment; D012919:Social Behavior; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: ambiguity; impression management; punishment; retribution; self-deception