Is the justification of punishment a moral question? Much contemporary writing on punishment, whether by philosophers or legal scholars, treats it as such. Theories of punishment are taken to be moral theories, and the problem of justifying punishment is presented as a key battle-ground in the war between utilitarian and deontological ethics. The question of how and when the state should punish...

If individuals will cooperate with cooperators, and punish non-cooperators even at a cost to themselves, then this strong reciprocity could minimize the cheating that undermines cooperation. Based upon numerous economic experiments, some have proposed that human cooperation is explained by strong reciprocity and norm enforcement. Second-party punishment is when you punish someone who defected o...

Many interactions in modern human societies are among strangers. Explaining cooperation in such interactions is challenging. The two most prominent explanations critically depend on individuals' willingness to punish defectors: In models of direct punishment, individuals punish antisocial behavior at a personal cost, whereas in models of indirect reciprocity, they punish indirectly by withholdi...

Conventional wisdom suggests that voters rarely punish politicians for involvement in sex scandals. Yet, we argue that some voters are likely to hold politicians accountable for their moral transgressions. We theorize that both hostile and benevolent sexists are more likely than nonsexists to punish women for involvement in a sex scandal – but each for different reasons. We posit that women pol...