Understanding retribution

The Root of Retribution : Coercion or Competition ?

Everyone has experienced injustices and slights, and so approximately everyone has experienced sentiments like anger, resentment, and vengefulness. These are not just feelings. They are also motives; I call them retributive motives. In their grip, one is motivated to confront, retaliate, avenge, or seek retribution, often contrary to better judgment. These motives can be contrasted with prospec...

Retribution and the Experience of Punishment

Retribution in a Cheap-talk Experiment

We use a two-person 3-stage game to investigate whether people choose to punish or reward another player by sacrificing money to increase or decrease the other person’s payoff. One player sends a message indicating an intended play, which is either favorable or unfavorable to the other player in the game. After the message, the sender and the receiver play a simultaneous 2x2 game. A deceptive m...

Blackwater fever: divine retribution or genetic happenstance?

ply of tropical afflictions; and they too were bitten by malariabearing mosquitoes. But the native population, having lived with the menace of malaria for a hundred generations, had inherited a modest measure of resistance to the disease; not so with the white slavers, their soldiers, missionaries or adventurers seeking precious metals. The medical literature of 1830 carried an article by a Fre...

Vicarious retribution: the role of collective blame in intergroup aggression.

We provide a new framework for understanding 1 aspect of aggressive conflict between groups, which we refer to as vicarious retribution. Vicarious retribution occurs when a member of a group commits an act of aggression toward the members of an outgroup for an assault or provocation that had no personal consequences for him or her but which did harm a fellow ingroup member. Furthermore, retribu...