Psychological Aspects of Retributive Justice

Retributive justice is a system by which offenders are punished in proportion to the moral magnitude of their intentionally committed harms. This chapter lays out the emerging psychological principles that underlie citizens’ intuitions regarding punishment. We rely on experimental methods and conclude that intuitions of justice are broadly consistent with the principles of retributive justice, and therefore systematically deviate from principles of deterrence and other utilitarian-based systems of punishing wrongs. We examine the recent contributions of social-neuroscience to the topic and conclude that retributive punishment judgments normally stem from the more general intuitive-based judgment system. Particular circumstances can trigger the reasoning-based system, however, thus indicating that this is a dual process mechanism. Importantly, though, evidence suggests that both the intuitive and reasoning systems adhere to the principles of retribution. The empirical results of this research have clear policy implications. Converging evidence suggests that the formal U.S. justice system is becoming increasingly utilitarian in nature, but that citizen intuitions about justice continue to track retributive principles. The resulting divide leads people to lose respect for the law, which means that they do not rely on the law’s guidance in ambiguous situations where the morally correct behavior is unclear. These are the dangers to society from having justice policies based jointly on the contradictory principles of retribution and utility, and we lay out an argument for enacting public policies more exclusively based on retributive principles of justice. The field of psychological research on retributive justice, as compared to other kinds of justice, is of more recent empirical investigation and is correspondingly less well researched. Recently, though, it has attracted enough psychological interest so that once can glimpse the beginnings of a conceptual account on how people think about this sort of justice. Some psychological principles begin to emerge. In this chapter, we will summarize some of this research, with the customary emphasis on research conducted in our own laboratories, and drawing in work of others where relevant. 1. Retributive Justice, in Relation to Other Kinds of Justice Retributive justice is roughly the question of how people who have intentionally committed known, morally wrong actions that either directly or indirectly harm others, should be punished for their misdeeds. Retributive justice is sometimes regarded as part of distributive justice, because distributive justice is in turn concerned with what people deserve for their actions. To some extent, of course, this is a question of nomenclature, but the great bulk of distributive justice research has concerned itself with what one positively deserves, in terms of a share-out of the rewards produced by 194 Kevin M. Carlsmith and John M. Darley Author's personal copy