NEUROSCIENCE

Restoring Justice: Punishing on behalf of another, but not for oneself

ABSTRACT

Classic social psychology and experimental economic studies argue that punishment is the ubiquitous response to violations of fairness norms. We demonstrate that expanding choice options (e.g. to include compensation of the victim) reveals that alternative forms of justice restoration are strongly preferred to punitive measures. Furthermore, we find that these other-regarding preferences for justice restoration are differentially deployed depending on the perspective of the deciding agent.