The Effect of Social Category on Third Party Punishment

Evolutionary Psychology
www.epjournal.net – 2007. 5(2): 289-305
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Original Article
The Effect of Social Category on Third Party Punishment
Debra Lieberman, Department of Psychology, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI USA. Email:
lieberma@hawaii.edu (Corresponding author)
Lance Linke, Department of Educational Psychology, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI, USA.
Abstract: 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.
Keywords: third party punishment, social category, kinship
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Introduction
For humans, as for other species, the behavior of others can have a significant
impact on one’s reproductive success, either directly or indirectly through one’s kin, social
exchange partners, friends, mates, or coalitional allies. For example, one can be cheated in
a social exchange, a family member can be the target of physical violence, a mate can
commit adultery, or a group member can defect during a collective action. All else equal,
design features that cost-effectively motivated the expenditure of energy to deter behaviors
imposing a cost on oneself or on members of one’s social network would have out-

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Social category and punishment
competed design features that were insensitive to others’ actions and associated fitness
consequences (e.g., see Levine and Kurzban, 2006). For this reason, natural selection is
hypothesized to have engineered psychological adaptations that (i) assess the costs of
others’ behaviors on oneself as well as members of one’s social network and (ii) use this
information to regulate desires and motivations to punish, that is, desires and motivations to
impose a cost on another individual. Indeed, evidence from studies in humans (e.g.,
Bernhard, Fischbacher, and Fehr, 2006; Carpenter and Matthews, 2005; Fehr and Gachter,
2002; Houser and Kurzban, 2002; Shinada, Yamagishi, and Ohmura, 2004) and non-human
species (e.g., Clutton-Brock, Price, and MacColl, 1992; de Waal, 1982; Hauser, 1992;
Manson, 1994; Nadler and Miller, 1982; Smuts and Smuts, 1983) indicate that individuals
engage in punitive behavior in response to a range of behaviors (e.g., the withholding of
resources and sexual avoidance).
The costs associated with a particular behavior will likely vary on a number of
factors including the social identity of the persons involved in the interaction and whether
the behavior takes place, for example, in a group context or not. Thus, motivations to
punish should be sensitive to (at least) these two factors. With respect to the persons
involved in the social interaction, motivations to punish should differ depending on
whether the individual incurring the cost of a particular behavior (e.g., a norm violation) is
oneself or not. That is, it should matter whether one is a second versus third party. Indeed,
researchers investigating the effects of punishment on cooperation have found that while
individuals are willing to incur a cost to punish a free-rider or norm violator, (e.g., Fehr and
Gachter, 2000, 2002; O’Gorman, Wilson, and Miller, 2005; Ostrom, Walker and Gardner,
1992), greater magnitudes of punishment are levied against individuals violating a norm
targeting oneself or one’s group compared to other individuals/groups (e.g., Carpenter and
Matthews, 2005; Fehr and Fischbacher, 2004). Nevertheless, individuals do punish third
party norm violators and recent research has started to uncover the conditions under which
this occurs (e.g., see Bernhard, Fischbacher, and Fehr, 2006; Carpenter and Matthews,
2005; Fehr and Fischbacher, 2004; Kurzban, DeScioli, and O’Brien, 2007). However, one
dimension that has yet to be fully explored is the third party punisher’s relationship to the
individuals involved in a norm violation (but see Bernhard et al., 2006).

Social categories and decisions to punish
To the extent that the social category of interactants influences the costs (or
benefits) transferred to members of one’s social network, it should also influence desires
and motivations to punish. That is, different categories of social agents might impose
different magnitudes of costs for a given action (e.g., cheating in a social exchange) leading
to varied emotional reactions and motivations to punish. Two social categories
hypothesized to influence the magnitude of assessed costs and thus desires to punish are
kinship (Clutton-Brock and Parker, 1995) and group membership (Pratto, Sidanius,
Stallworth, and Malle, 1994; Sidanius, Pratto, and Mitchell, 1994). Each dimension is
discussed in turn.
Kinship. According to kin selection theory (Hamilton, 1963, 1964), genetic
relatedness regulates patterns of altruistic and competitive effort. The categorization of
another as kin increases motivations to act altruistically (Burnstein, Crandall, and
Kitayama, 1994; Korchmaros and Kenny, 2001; Kruger, 2003; Lieberman, Tooby and
Cosmides, 2007; Peters, Ünür, Clark, and Schulze, 2004) and decreases motivations to
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Social category and punishment
inflict costs (Daly and Wilson, 1988; Petrinovich, O’Neill, and Jorgensen, 1993). Given
that kinship tempers motivations to impose costs, it should affect decisions to punish. For
example, when one’s kin have committed a moral violation either in an interaction with
oneself or a third party, desires and motivations to punish (or to have them punished; see
Robinson and Kurzban [2006] for a discussion of the distinction between desires that
people be punished and motivations to punish) will be muted compared to when the
violation is committed by non-kin. Similarly, when a kin member is the victim of a moral
violation, the perceived costs inflicted by the offender will be greater than if the victim is
non-kin, leading to greater desires and motivations to punish the offender.
In a recent paper, O’Gorman, Wilson, and Miller (2005) found that individuals
assigned equivalent levels of punishment to a cousin, friend, and stranger who stole from a
group account. However, they did find that altruistic motivations differed depending on
whether the target of assistance was a cousin or stranger with greater levels of sympathy
and willingness to help reported for cousins compared to strangers. Though individuals
punished kin to a similar extent as other social categories, this might be particular to the
context of a public goods scenario which might activate a different psychology compared
to non-collective interactions. Furthermore, in the O’Gorman et al. study, participants
engaged in second party punishment since they themselves were victimized by cheaters.
Thus, it is an open question as to whether third party punishers would punish kin
differently than non-kin.
Group membership. Group/coalition membership is another social dimension that
should affect the size of the cost imposed on oneself or one’s social network thus
influencing the desire to punishment. Humans possess cognitive adaptations to categorize
individuals in the social world according to coalition or group membership (Kurzban,
Tooby, and Cosmides, 2001) and such categorization has been found to occur with minimal
prompting (Rabbie and Horwitz, 1969; Tajfel, Billig, Bundy, and Flament, 1971). Social
identity theory (Tajfel and Turner, 1986) and social dominance theory (Pratto et al., 1994)
predict that individuals will favor in-group members over out-group members (e.g.,
Brewer, 1979; Schopler and Insko, 1992; Sidanius, Pratto, and Mitchell, 1994). This is
consistent with evolutionary analyses which suggest that, all else equal, the welfare of an
out-group member will be less valued than the welfare of an in-group member (e.g.,
Alexander, 1987). Under ancestral conditions, in-group members represented opportunities
for exchange, friendship, mating, and coalitional alliance, affordances out-group members
were less likely to share (Kurzban and Leary, 2001). For these reasons, individuals might
be more sensitive to the costs imposed on in-group members compared to out-group
members and, as a result, be more likely to assign greater magnitudes of punishment to
perpetrators when they are not a member of one’s group (Pratto et al., 1994; Sommers and
Ellsworth, 2001). Likewise, given that costs suffered by an in-group member can affect the
strength of one’s social network, a perpetrator victimizing an in-group member is
hypothesized to incite greater punishment compared to when the victim is an out-group
member (e.g., see Bernhard et al., 2006).

Current investigation: experimental design and predictions
Our goal in this paper is to initiate a line of research to investigate the effects of
social category on third party punishment, attributions, and emotional reactions. We report
data from three studies that considered a particular kind of social transgression, stealing, to
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see whether our hypotheses were supported. This research adds to the existing literature
showing that social category (e.g., kinship and group membership) plays a role in
motivations to punish third party norm violators (e.g., Bernhard et al., 2006).
To investigate whether social category influences the magnitude of punishment
deemed appropriate for an offense we developed fictional scenarios, a technique employed
by others to investigate the effects of social category on punishment (O’Gorman, Wilson,
and Miller, 2005). Experiment 1 investigates the magnitude of punishment and attributions
assigned to offenders of different social categories while Experiment 2 investigates the
magnitude of punishment and attributions assigned to the offender as a function of victim
social category. The social categories used were kin and schoolmates (in-group members),
and foreign visitors (out-group members). In Experiments 1 and 2, participants assigned
levels of punishment without being asked to consider how much they were willing to give
up to do so. For this reason, Experiment 3 was designed to investigate whether the social
category of the victim influenced motivations to expend time and energy to bring the
offender to justice. Experiment 3 also reports the emotional responses of participants
according to the social category of the victim and how emotional responses relate to
punishment magnitude. Specifically, we made the following predictions:
P1: Punishment magnitude assigned to the perpetrator of an offense (a) will be lowest when
the perpetrator of the offense is described as kin followed by a schoolmate and then a
foreigner (Experiment 1) and (b) will be greatest when the victim of the offense is
one’s kin followed by a schoolmate, and then a foreigner (Experiment 2).
P2: In addition to punishment magnitude, we investigated whether attributions of remorse
differed according to perpetrator and victim social category. Given that individuals are
biased to direct more favorable attributions toward members of their in-group (Brewer
and Brown, 1998; Pettigrew, 1979; Sommers and Ellsworth, 2001), we predicted
individuals would attribute the lowest level of remorse to a perpetrator described as an
out-group member followed by a schoolmate and then kin (Experiment 1). Similarly,
we predicted individuals would attribute the lowest level of remorse to a perpetrator
who victimized kin followed by a schoolmate and then foreigner (Experiment 2).
P3: In addition to desires that perpetrators receive different levels of punishment according
to victim social category, we predicted that participants would be more willing to
expend time and energy to punish a perpetrator when the victim is described as kin
followed by a schoolmate and then a foreign visitor (Experiment 3).
P4: Last, we investigated whether the intensity of moral emotions varied according to
victim social category. Anger is a moral emotion associated with (a non-self
perpetrated) injustice (Baumeister, Stillwell, and Wotman, 1990; Haidt, 2003; Rozin,
Lowery, Imada, and Haidt, 1999) and with enhanced levels of punishment (Averill,
1983; Lerner, Goldberg, and Tetlock, 1998). If the category of social interactants
affects one’s perception of injustice and motivations to punish, then the magnitude of
anger and other related emotions should track social category. Thus, greater levels of
anger should result when kin are victimized compared to non-kin and when in-group
members are victimized compared to out-group members. Furthermore, levels of
anger should be correlated with motivations to bring the perpetrator to justice
(Experiment 3).


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Social category and punishment
Experiment 1: Punishment and judgments according to perpetrator social category
Materials and Methods
Participants were 268 undergraduate students (174 females; 94 males; age range:
18-59; M ± SD: 21.16 ± 4.04) at the University of Hawaii who participated in this research
for class credit. Participants were asked to read a scenario involving the theft of $1500. The
social category of the offender was varied across participants such that each participant
read a scenario in which the offender was the participant’s family member, a schoolmate,
or a foreign visitor. The scenario read as follows:
“One evening, while at dinner at an expensive local restaurant, a family member [a
schoolmate, a foreign visitor] watches as a large party of about 20 people leaves cash on
their table for the check and then exits the restaurant. Before the server goes to the table to
collect the money, your family member [your schoolmate, the foreigner] walks past the
table, secretly takes the $1500 left for the bill, and leaves through the front door without
anyone witnessing what they have done. Your family member [Your schoolmate, The
foreign visitor] is now $1500 richer and no one saw a thing.”
After reading the scenario, participants were asked to complete a short survey
which included questions about appropriate punishments that best fit the offense (e.g., fines
and jail times; see below), the moral wrongness of the offense on a 7 point Likert scale (0:
not morally wrong at all; 6: extremely morally wrong), and how remorseful the offender
would feel after committing the act on a 7-point Likert scale (0: no remorse at all; 6: very
remorseful). Two dependent variables, fine and jail time, were created based on responses
to the questions regarding punishment:
Fine: “Let’s say your family member’s [your schoolmate’s, the foreign visitor’s]
punishment is to pay back the money they took ($1500) and pay an additional fine. What
additional fine best fits this act?” Participants were asked to choose from eight categories of
fines ranging from $50 to $3000 ($50, $100, $500, $1000, $1500, $2000, $2500, $3000;
descriptive statistics: categorical fine: range 1-8, M ± SD: 3.17 ± 1.89; absolute fine: range:
$50-$3000, M ± SD: $736.18 ± $794.65).
Jail time: “Let’s say your family member’s [your schoolmate’s, the foreign
visitor’s] punishment is to pay back the money and serve some jail time. How much jail
time should they have to serve?” Participants were asked to choose from eight categories of
jail sentences ranging from one month to ten years (1mth, 6 months, 1yr, 2yrs, 4yrs, 6yrs,
8yrs, or 10yrs). Across all conditions, only nine participants (1.8%) chose 4yrs or longer.
Thus, a new variable was created yielding four categories for data analyses (1mth, 6
months, 1yr, and 2yrs or more; descriptive statistics: categorical jail time: range 1-4, M ±
SD: 1.35 ± .76; absolute fine: range: 1-48 months, M ± SD: 2.93 months ± 4.95 months).

Data analyses
A predictor variable with the following values was created to index perpetrator
social category: “1” = family member, “2” = schoolmate, “3” = foreign visitor. All
analyses use the more conservative categorical dependent measures, not the actual fine ($)
or jail time (months). However, analyses yield similar outcomes when actual dependent
measures are used. Actual fine and jail time are depicted in figures. Directed univariate and
multivariate analyses were performed (Rice and Gaines, 1994). All comparisons report the
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Cohen’s d measure of effect size.
Results
Our main results are presented in Figure 1. As predicted, increased social distance
led to increased levels of punishment (Figure 1A, B). Multivariate analyses were conducted
entering fine and jail time as dependent variables and sex as a covariate. Analyses showed a
significant effect of social category for both fine (F2,262 = 7.11, P < .001) and jail time

Figure 1: Punishment, attribution and moral judgment according to offender social category

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(F2,262 = 5.58, P = .003). No effect for sex was found nor was there a significant interaction
between sex and social category (F’s < 1).
Planned comparisons indicated that participants assigned a greater fine and jail time
when the offender was a foreigner compared to when the offender was either a schoolmate
(fine: t172 = 2.43, P = .008, d = .37; jail time: t175 = 2.56, P = .005, d = .39) or a family
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Social category and punishment
member (fine: t181 = 5.17, P < .001, d = .77; jail time: t132 = 5.14, P < .001, d = .89). In
addition, participants assigned a greater fine and jail time when the offender was a
schoolmate compared to when the offender was a family member (fine: t151 = 2.32, P = .01,
d = .38; jail time: t122 = 2.56, P = .006, d = .46; see Figure 1A [family: (M ± S.D.) 443.26 ±
603.88, n = 89; schoolmate: 683.75 ± 835.40, n = 80; foreigner: 988.38 ± 896.39, n = 99]
and Figure 1B [jail time: family: 1.54 ± 2.67; schoolmate: 2.81 ± 4.43; foreigner: 4.92 ±
6.81]).
Though we found differences in punishment magnitude, participants reported the
same level of moral wrongness across perpetrator social category (Figure 1D; (M ± S.D.):
family: 5.42 ± 1.03; schoolmate: 5.50 ± .84; foreigner: 5.30 ± .97).
Univariate analyses indicated a significant effect for social category on attributions
of remorse, F2,260 = 14.33, P < .001 (Figure 1C). No effect for sex or any interaction
between sex and social category was found. Planned contrasts showed significant
differences between each third party pair with participants attributing greater feelings of
remorse to family members that committed an offense (M ± S.D.: 4.89 ± 1.41) followed by
schoolmates (3.90 ± 1.89), and then foreigners (3.29 ± 1.84; kin-schoolmate: t145 = 3.67, P
< .001, d = .61; kin-foreigner: t181 = 6.59, P < .001, d = .98; schoolmate-foreigner: t166 =
2.25, P = .013, d = .35).
Discussion
Results from Experiment 1 indicate that the social category of the perpetrator of an
offense affects the magnitude of punishment deemed appropriate with kin receiving the
least punishment and out-group members receiving the greatest punishment. While
attributions of remorse followed the predicted pattern, moral judgments did not. That is,
regardless of the perpetrator’s social category, participants viewed the transgression as very
morally wrong. From these data, it seems that participants do not base their levels of
punishment on their (reported) moral judgments (indeed, moral ratings were not correlated
with jail time and only weakly correlated with fine: r = .14). However, given that ratings of
morality were uniformly at ceiling, it is possible that either participants used more objective
standards to evaluate moral wrongness or our measure did not capture actual variation in
moral sentiments leaving open the possibility that a positive relationship exists between
sentiments of moral wrongness and punishment magnitude.
To provide converging lines of evidence that social category influences decisions to
punish outside a collective interaction, we developed a second experiment manipulating the
social category of the victim of an offense. Again, we predicted different reactions based on
whether the victim was described as kin, a schoolmate or a foreigner with the strongest
punitive reactions when the victim was kin. Consistent with results from an experiment
employing methods from experimental economics (Bernhard et al., 2006), we also
predicted that the perpetrator of an offense would receive the greatest punishment when the
victim was described as kin followed by a schoolmate (in-group members) and then a
foreigner (an out-group member).


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Experiment 2: Punishment and judgments according to victim social category
Materials and Methods
Participants were 288 undergraduate students (188 females; 100 males; age: 18-59:
Mean ± S.D. = 21.22 ± 4.52) at the University of Hawaii who participated in this research
for class credit. Participants were asked to read a scenario involving a burglary in which
$1500 of property was stolen. In this experiment, the social category of the victim of this
crime was varied between participants and was described as the participant’s family
member, a schoolmate, or a foreign visitor. The scenario read as follows:
“Imagine that one evening a burglar broke into your family member’s [a
classmate’s, a foreign visitor’s] home while they were asleep and stole some expensive
property including electronics and jewelry that was estimated to be worth $1500.”
After reading the scenario, participants were asked to complete a short survey
similar to Experiment 1, which included questions about appropriate punishments for the
act described (e.g., fines and jail times that best fit the offense). Two dependent variables,
fine and jail time, were created based on responses to the following questions:
Fine: “Let’s say the burglar’s punishment is to return the items stolen and pay an
additional fine. What additional fine best fits this act?” Participants were asked to choose
from potential fines ranging from $50 to $3000 (response categories were the same as
reported in Experiment 1; descriptive statistics: fine (categorical): range 1-8, M ± SD: 4.84
± 2.06; fine (actual): range: $50-$3000, M ± SD: $1446.76 ± $992.40).
Jail time: “Let’s say the burglar’s punishment is to return the items stolen and serve
some jail time. How much jail time fits this crime?” Participants were asked to choose
from eight categories of jail times ranging from one month to 10 years (response categories
and variable manipulations were the same as reported in Experiment 1; descriptive
statistics: jail time (categorical): range 1-4, M ± SD: 2.61 ± 1.06; jail time (actual): range:
1-48 months, M ± SD: 11.47 months ± 8.45 months). Data analyses are the same as
reported for Experiment 1.
Results
Similar to Experiment 1, social category affects decisions regarding punishment
magnitude, especially decisions regarding kin versus non-kin (see Figure 2). Directed
multivariate analyses yielded a significant effect of social category on jail time (F2,284 =
4.81, P = .006) but not fine (P = .11; Figure 2 shows actual, not categorical fines and jail
times; see Methods). Similar to Experiment 1, there was no effect for subject sex or
interaction between social category and sex.
Planned comparisons indicated participants reported greater punishments fit the
offense when the victim was kin compared to when the victim was a schoolmate (fine: t284
= 1.62, P = .05, d = .19; jail time: t284 = 1.98, P = .025, d = .23) and when the victim was a
foreign visitor (fine: t284 = 1.62, P = .05, d = .19; jail time: t284 = 3.06, P = .001, d = .36; see
Figure 2A [family: 1594.39 ± 985.43, n = 98; schoolmate: 1354.40 ± 918.26, n = 91;
foreigner: 1370.71 ± 981.23, n = 99] and Figure 2B [family: 13.60 ± 8.67; schoolmate:
11.34 ± 8.42; foreigner: 9.86 ± 7.77]). No significant difference was found between the
punishments assigned when the victim was a schoolmate or a foreign visitor.
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In this Experiment there was also no effect of social category on how morally
wrong the offense was perceived to be; the mean moral wrongness was ~5.6 out of 6.0
across all social categories of victims (Figure 2D).

Figure 2: Punishment assigned to burglar as a function of social category of victim.

Unlike Experiment 1, there was not a significant effect of social category on
attributions of remorse though responses did follow the expected pattern. Nevertheless,
planned contrasts did show a significant difference in the attributions reported for kin (2.27
± 1.73) compared to foreigners (2.71 ± 1.93; t285 = 1.73, P = .042; see Figure 2C;
schoolmate: 2.42 ± 1.96).
Discussion
Data from Experiment 2 provide additional evidence that social category influences
the level of punishment deemed appropriate for a norm violation. Though punishment
magnitude for the perpetrator varied according to victim social category, moral judgments
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did not, replicating the pattern found in Experiment 1. Attributions, while they were in the
predicted direction, did not yield a significant main effect unlike in Experiment 1.
One limitation of Experiments 1 and 2 is that participants did not have to think
about trade-offs when punishing the perpetrator. For this reason, we designed Experiment 3
to investigate how willing participants would be to devote time and energy to bring a
perpetrator to justice as a function of victim social category. We also investigated whether
emotional response to the offense varied as a function of victim social category. If
emotions play a role in motivating punitive behaviors (e.g., Averill, 1983; Haidt, 2003;
Lerner, Goldberg, and Tetlock, 1998; O’Gorman, Wilson, and Miller, 2005; Rozin et al.,
1999), then emotional intensity should correlate with punishment magnitude and more
intense negative emotions should be reported for victims described, for example, as kin
versus non-kin and in-group versus out-group members.
Experiment 3: The effect of victim social category on emotional reactions and
willingness to expend time and energy to bring an offender to justice
Materials and Methods
Participants were 78 undergraduate psychology students (52 females; 26 males; age:
19-46; Mean ± S.D.: 22.81 ± 5.05) at the University of Hawaii who participated in this
research for class credit. Participants were asked to read a scenario involving a burglary in
which $3000 of property was stolen. The victim of the crime was varied between
participants and was described as the participant’s family member, a schoolmate, or a
foreign visitor. The scenario read as follows:
“Imagine that one evening a burglar broke into your family member’s [a
classmate’s, a foreign visitor’s] home while they were asleep and stole some expensive
property including electronics and jewelry that was estimated to be worth $3000.”
After reading the scenario, participants were asked to complete a short survey
which included questions about the participant’s emotional reactions to the offense.
Participants were provided with a list of emotion terms and asked to indicate how much
they felt each one on a 7-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (do not feel this at all) to 7 (feel
this intensely). The emotion terms included angry, disgusted, indifferent, and vengeful. In
addition, participants were asked to indicate how many days they would be willing to take
off work and forfeit pay to search for the burglar and, separately, how willing they would
be to devote their weekends for three months to finding the burglar. These questions were
designed to assess how willing participants would be to incur a cost to bring the burglar to
justice. Two dependent variables, no pay and weekends, were created based on responses to
the following questions:
No pay: “If it meant not getting paid from work, how many days would you be
willing to take off from work to help find the burglar?” This variable consists of the
number of days participants wrote in (Mean ± S.D.: 4.99 ± 14.62; Range: 0-120).
Approximately 80% of participants earned income from a job (daily pay: $0-$150; M ±
S.D.: $45.37 ± $35.94). Daily income did not correlate with the constructed variable.
Weekends: “How willing would you be to give up weekends for the next 3 months
to search for the burglar?” Participants responded on a 7-point Likert scale ranging from 1
(not willing at all) to 7 (extremely willing) (M ± S.D.: 3.12 ± 1.76).
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