| Summary: | Motivations to punish should depend on a number of factors including the nature of the interaction (e.g., collective action versus dyadic exchange) and the social category of the interactants. Here we focus on social category and investigate whether the relationship to a perpetrator and, separately, a victim of a moral transgression affects the magnitude of third party punishment, moral judgment, attribution, and emotional response. Participants read scenarios describing a moral violation in which the perpetrator (Experiment 1) or victim (Experiment 2) of an offense was described as kin, a schoolmate, or a foreigner. Penalties and attributions of remorse varied according to the social category of the perpetrator as well as the victim. However, moral judgments did not. In a third experiment, which also varied the relationship to the victim of a moral transgression, participants reported their willingness to expend time and energy to bring a perpetrator to justice as well as their emotional responses to the crime. As predicted, participants reported a greater willingness to sacrifice their weekends and a day's pay to search for a perpetrator victimizing kin followed by a schoolmate and then foreign visitor. These and other results including emotional reactions are discussed in the context of motivations to punish third party violators of a social norm.
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