Reconfiguration of the costly punishment network architecture in punishment decision-making.

Human costly punishment is rooted in multiple regions across large-scale functional systems, a collection of which constitutes the costly punishment network (CPN). Our previous study found that the CPN is intrinsically organized in an optimized and reliable manner to support individual costly punishment propensity. However, it remains unknown how the CPN is reconfigured in response to external cognitive demands in punishment decision-making. Here, we combined resting-state and task-functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine the task-related reconfigurations of intrinsic organizations of the CPN when participants made decisions of costly punishment in the Ultimatum Game. Although a strong consistency was observed in the overall pattern and each nodal profile between the intrinsic (task-free) and extrinsic (task-evoked) functional connectivity of the CPN, condition-general and condition-specific reconfigurations were also evident. Specifically, both unfair and fair conditions induced increases in functional connectivity between a few specific pairs of regions, and the unfair condition additionally induced increases in network efficiency of the CPN. Intriguingly, the specific changes in global efficiency of the CPN in the unfair condition were associated with individual differences in costly punishment after adjusting for the corresponding results in the fair condition, which were further identified for females but not for males. These findings were largely reproducible on independent samples. Collectively, our findings provide novel insights into how the CPN adaptively reconfigures its network architecture to support costly punishment.

The science of justice: The neuropsychology of social punishment.

The social punishment (SP) of norm violations has received much attention across multiple disciplines. However, current models of SP fail to consider the role of motivational processes, and none can explain the observed behavioral and neuropsychological differences between the two recognized forms of SP: second-party punishment (2PP) and third-party punishment (3PP). After reviewing the literature giving rise to the current models of SP, we propose a unified model of SP which integrates general psychological descriptions of decision-making as a confluence of affect, cognition, and motivation, with evidence that SP is driven by two main factors: the amount of harm (assessed primarily in the salience network) and the norm violator's intention (assessed primarily in the default-mode and central-executive networks). We posit that motivational differences between 2PP and 3PP, articulated in mesocorticolimbic pathways, impact final SP by differentially impacting the assessments of harm and intention done in these domain-general large-scale networks. This new model will lead to a better understanding of SP, which might even improve forensic, procedural, and substantive legal practices.

Vicarious severe school discipline predicts racial disparities among non-disciplined Black and White American adolescents.

Racial disparities in school discipline may have collateral consequences on the larger non-suspended student population. The present study leveraged two longitudinal datasets with 1201 non-suspended adolescents (48% Black, 52% White; 55% females, 45% males; Mage : 12-13) enrolled in 84 classrooms in an urban mid-Atlantic city of the United States during the 2016-2017 and 2017-2018 academic years. Classmates' minor infraction suspensions predicted greater next year's defiant infractions among non-suspended Black adolescents, and this longitudinal relation was worse for Black youth enrolled in predominantly Black classrooms. For White youth, classmates' minor infraction suspensions predicted greater defiant infractions specifically when they were enrolled in predominantly non-White classrooms. Racial inequities in school discipline may have repercussions that disadvantage all adolescents regardless of race.

Cognitive flexibility assessment with a new Reversal learning task paradigm compared with the Wisconsin card sorting test exploring the moderating effect of gender and stress.

Cognitive flexibility plays a crucial role in psychological health and this research aimed to investigate its assessment. We developed a novel Reversal learning task (RLT) paradigm adding pure reward (+ 100 points, 0) and punishment (- 100 points, 0) conditions to the classic reward-punishment condition (+ 100, - 100); we also analyzed the RLT convergent validity with approach-avoidance questionnaires (BIS-BAS and Approach-Avoidance Temperament questionnaire) and the Wisconsin card sorting test (WCST) scores through a Principal component analysis. In a sample of 374 participants, we found that these three conditions differently assess flexibility and that high RLT reward sensitivity in the punishment condition (0; - 100) is related with high BAS reward responsiveness. Moreover, we found that RLT and WCST flexibility scores, although associated, detect different facets of cognitive flexibility. Finally, in a second sample (N = 172), we explored the impact of stress, moderated by gender, on RLT and WCST. Whereas, WCST was not impacted by these variables, in RLT stressed women showed increased perseverative errors in punishment condition (- 100, 0) and reduced punishment sensitivity in reward condition (+ 100, 0).Overall, our newly developed RLT paradigm and the WCST seem to provide different ways to assess cognitive flexibility and to be differently affected by moderators, such as gender and stress.

Neural mechanisms of the mood effects on third-party responses to injustice after unfair experiences.

Behavioral decision theory argues that humans can adjust their third-party responses (e.g., punishment and compensation) to injustice by integrating unfair experiences. Typically, the mood plays an important role in such a decision-making process. However, the underlying neurocognitive bases remain largely unclear. We first employ a modified third-party justice game in which an allocator split an amount of money between oneself and a receiver. The participants can reapportion the money as observers by choosing from the following three costly options: compensate the receiver, accept the current allocation, or punish the allocator. Then, a second-party pseudo interaction is conducted where participants receive more (i.e., advantageous unfair experience) or less (i.e., disadvantageous unfair experience) than others. Finally, participants perform the third-party justice game again after unfair experiences. Here, we use functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to measure participants' brain activities during third-party responses to injustice. We find participants compensate more to the receiver after advantageous unfair experience, which involved enhanced positive emotion, weakened sense of unfairness, and is linked with increased activity in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (rDLPFC). In contrast, participants punish more on the allocator after disadvantageous unfair experience, which might primarily stem from their negative emotional responses, strong sense of unfairness, and is associated with significantly decreased activity in the rDLPFC. Our results suggest that third-party compensation and punishment involved differential psychological and neural bases. Our findings highlight the crucial roles of second-party unfair experiences and the corresponding mood responses in third-party responses to unfairness, and unravel the intermediate neural architecture.

Ire and punishment: Incidental anger and costly punishment in children, adolescents, and adults.

Why do children, adolescents, and adults engage in costly punishment to sanction fairness violations? Two studies investigated the differential impact of incidental anger on the costly punishment of 8-year-olds, 13-year-olds, and adults. Focusing on experimentally manipulated incidental anger allows for a causal investigation as to whether and how anger affects costly punishment in these age groups in addition to other motives such as inequity aversion. Study 1 (N = 210) assessed the effect of incidental anger (vs. a neutral emotion) on second-party punishment, where punishers were direct victims of fairness violations. Study 2 (N = 208) examined third-party punishment, where the punisher was an observer unaffected by the violation. Across ages, incidental anger increased the second-party punishment of unequal offers but not equal offers. Thus, anger seems to play a causal role in the punishment of unfairness when fairness violations are self-relevant. As predicted, adults' third-party punishment of unequal offers was higher in the incidental anger condition than in the neutral emotion condition. Children's third-party punishment of unfairness was not affected by the emotion condition, but incidental anger increased adolescents' third-party punishment across offers. Overall, our data suggest that the association between anger and costly punishment is based on the self-relevance of the violation. In third-party situations, where unfairness does not affect the self, social-cognitive processes that develop well into adulthood, such as emotional appraisals, might be necessary for third parties to engage in costly punishment.

Neural correlates of successful costly punishment in the Ultimatum game on a trial-by-trial basis.

Costly punishment describes decisions of an interaction partner to punish an opponent for violating rules of fairness at the expense of personal costs. Here, we extend the interaction process by investigating the impact of a socio-emotional reaction of the opponent in response to the punishment that indicates whether punishment was successful or not. In a modified Ultimatum game, emotional facial expressions of the proposer in response to the decision of the responder served as feedback stimuli. We found that both honored reward following acceptance of an offer (smiling compared to neutral facial expression) and successful punishment (sad compared to neutral facial expression) elicited a reward positivity, indicating that punishment was the intended outcome. By comparing the pattern of results with a probabilistic learning task, we show that the reward positivity on sad facial expressions was specific for the context of costly punishment. Additionally, acceptance rates on a trial-by-trial basis were altered according to P3 amplitudes in response to the emotional facial reaction of the proposer. Our results are in line with the concept of costly punishment as an intentional act following norm-violating behavior. Socio-emotional stimuli have an important influence on the perception and behavior in economic bargaining.

Evolution of deterrence with costly reputation information.

Deterrence, a defender's avoidance of a challenger's attack based on the threat of retaliation, is a basic ingredient of social cooperation in several animal species and is ubiquitous in human societies. Deterrence theory has recognized that deterrence can only be based on credible threats, but retaliating being costly for the defender rules this out in one-shot interactions. If interactions are repeated and observable, reputation building has been suggested as a way to sustain credibility and enable the evolution of deterrence. But this explanation ignores both the source and the costs of obtaining information on reputation. Even for small information costs successful deterrence is never evolutionarily stable. Here we use game-theoretic modelling and agent-based simulations to resolve this puzzle and to clarify under which conditions deterrence can nevertheless evolve and when it is bound to fail. Paradoxically, rich information on defenders' past actions leads to a breakdown of deterrence, while with only minimal information deterrence can be highly successful. We argue that reputation-based deterrence sheds light on phenomena such as costly punishment and fairness, and might serve as a possible explanation for the evolution of informal property rights.

Residential Institutions Redress Board of the Irish Government 2002-2018.

In 1999, the Irish Government commissioned a report into the abuse of children who were in the care of facilities managed and run under the auspices of the Roman Catholic Church in the Irish Republic in the 1940s and 1950s. It reported in 2009. A Redress Board was set up to investigate and compensate claimants who were abused physically and mentally as children when living in these facilities. The Board sat for 16 years. In total, 16,650 applications were processed with awards worth €970 million. Of these, 1069 applications were withdrawn, refused or had a nil award. This report on work of the Commission and the Board derives from the histories given and the expert assessment of 19 claimants for compensation. Their ages ranged between 47 and 72 years at the time of the expert's assessment.

To punish or to assist? Divergent reactions to ingroup and outgroup members disobeying social distancing.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, societies face the formidable challenge of developing sustainable forms of sociability-cumsocial-distancing - enduring social life while containing the virus and preventing new outbreaks. Accordant public policies often balance between retributive (punishment-based) and assistance (solidarity-based) measures to foster responsible behaviour. Yet, the uncontrolled spreading of the disease has divided public opinion about which measures are best suited, and it has made salient group disparities in behaviour, potentially straining intergroup relations, elevating heated emotions, and undercutting coordinated international responses. In a 2 × 2 between-subjects experiment, British citizens (N = 377) read about national in-group or outgroup members (categorical differentiation), who were either conforming to or deviating from the corona regulations (normative differentiation). Participants then reported moral emotions towards the target national group and indicated support for public policies. In general, support for assistance policies outweighed support for retributive measures. Second, however, norm deviation was associated with less positive and more negative moral emotions, the latter category further relating to more punitiveness and less assistance support. Finally, respondents who read about norm-violating outgroup members especially reported support for retributive measures, indicating that people might use norm deviation to justify outgroup derogation. We discuss implications for policymakers and formulate future research avenues.

Household economic hardship as a moderator of the associations between maternal spanking and child externalizing behavior problems.

BACKGROUND: Spanking is associated with detrimental outcomes for young children. Research shows that spanking is more commonly used in low-income households. OBJECTIVE: To examine whether economic hardship, measured by household income-to-poverty ratio at the time of the child's birth, moderated the longitudinal associations between maternal spanking and child externalizing behavior problems during the first nine years of childhood. PARTICIPANTS AND SETTING: Mother-child pairs (N = 4,149) from a cohort study of urban families in 20 US cities. METHODS: Cross-lagged path models examined associations between maternal spanking and externalizing behavior when children were between the ages of 1 and 9. Multigroup analyses examined whether income-to-poverty ratio moderated these associations. RESULTS: Bivariate analyses showed that income-to-poverty ratio was associated with child externalizing behavior problems at each time point; income-to-poverty ratio was associated with maternal spanking at age 3 only. Longitudinal path model results indicated that, for low- and middle-income groups, maternal spanking at each age had significant associations with child externalizing behavior at each subsequent age. For the high-income group, maternal spanking at age 1 and age 3 had significant associations with child externalizing behavior at each subsequent age; however, spanking at age 5 was not associated with child externalizing behavior at age 9. CONCLUSIONS: Spanking is disadvantageous for children at all income levels, with more persistent effects in low- and middle-income families. For higher-income families, the associations of maternal spanking with child externalizing behavior problems may be attenuated as child age increases. Regardless of income level, parents should be advised against spanking.

Does suffering suffice? An experimental assessment of desert retributivism.

Michael S. Moore is among the most prominent normative theorists to argue that retributive justice, understood as the deserved suffering of offenders, justifies punishment. Moore claims that the principle of retributive justice is pervasively supported by our judgments of justice and sufficient to ground punishment. We offer an experimental assessment of these two claims, (1) the pervasiveness claim, according to which people are widely prone to endorse retributive judgments, and (2) the sufficiency claim, according to which no non-retributive principle is necessary for justifying punishment. We test these two claims in a survey and a related survey experiment in which we present participants (N = ~900) with the stylized description of a criminal case. Our results seem to invalidate claim (1) and provide mixed results concerning claim (2). We conclude that retributive justice theories which advance either of these two claims need to reassess their evidential support.

Minor infractions are not minor: School infractions for minor misconduct may increase adolescents' defiant behavior and contribute to racial disparities in school discipline.

Although minor misconduct is normative in adolescence, such behavior may be met with punishment in American schools. As part of a punitive disciplinary approach, teachers may give adolescents official infractions for minor misconduct-that is, a minor infraction-presumably to deter future problem behavior. This article investigates three arguments that challenge the wisdom of this assumption and considers the potentially detrimental effects of minor infractions: (a) minor infractions increase, rather than deter, adolescents' defiant behavior; (b) these effects are exacerbated among adolescents who are highly attached to school; and (c) teachers' punishment of minor misconduct may be racially biased, resulting in African American students receiving more minor infractions than White students. To test these hypotheses, 729 adolescents' school disciplinary records were analyzed over 1 academic year. Longitudinal multilevel analyses were conducted to assess (a) if receiving minor infractions predicted later increases in infractions for defiant behavior at the within-student level, (b) whether adolescents' attachment to school moderated this association, and (c) if a disparity existed between African American and White students' average level of minor infractions. Results indicated that minor infractions predicted subsequent rises in defiant behavior, and this link was exacerbated for adolescents who reported initially high levels, but not low levels, of school attachment. Furthermore, African American students received more minor infractions than White students, controlling for a host of risk factors for school misconduct. Findings are discussed in relation to American school discipline policies and African Americans' persistent overrepresentation in school discipline and the criminal justice system. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Young children police group members at personal cost.

Humans' evolutionary success has depended in part on their willingness to punish, at personal cost, bad actors who have not harmed them directly-a behavior known as costly third-party punishment. The present studies examined the psychological processes underlying this behavior from a developmental perspective, using a novel, naturalistic method. In these studies (ages 3-6, total N = 225), participants of all ages enacted costly punishment, and rates of punishment increased with age. In addition, younger children (ages 3-4), when in a position of authority, were more likely to punish members of their own group, whereas older children (ages 5-6) showed no group- or authority-based differences. These findings demonstrate the developmental emergence of costly punishment, and show how a sense of authority can foster the kind of group-regulatory behavior that costly punishment may have evolved to serve. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Harsh parenting during early childhood and child development.

We study the relationship between harsh parenting strategies, including psychological and physical aggressions that do not constitute abuse, on early childhood cognitive and socio-emotional development. We estimate a value-added model that controls for a rich set of child, mother, and family characteristics, from a nationally representative sample of Chilean children aged 52-83 months. We find harsh parenting is significantly associated with lower verbal skills (Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test) of a magnitude of 0.06 standard deviations, and with increased behavioral problems (Child Behavior Check List), by 0.11 standard deviations, including internalization, externalization, and sleep problems. We also find that the more systematic (persistent) harsh parenting is, the stronger the association; the association is similar for boys and girls; reaches its peak at about 5 years of age; and it is stronger for children with less educated mothers.

What drives the (un)empathic bystander to intervene? Insights from eye tracking.

Norm violations (e.g., unfair transgressions) are often met with punishment even by people who are not directly affected. However, punishing a transgressor is not the only option for a bystander to restore justice. Empathic concerns may dictate instead to give a helping hand to a victim. Using a pre-registered, fully incentivized eye-tracking study (N = 47), we investigated the cognitive mechanism linking bystanders' empathic concern and justice-restoring intervention behaviour. The results show that not only the decision to intervene (i.e., either costly compensating the victim or punishing the transgressor) but also the attention directed towards a victim's payoffs (i.e., measured by the proportion of fixations) during the decision-making period systematically varied with the individual level of empathic concern. Exploring this link further, we additionally instructed participants to focus on specific components of the norm violation, namely the (un)fair conduct of the offender or the victim's feelings. Surprisingly, highly empathic bystanders were more likely to punish the offender when the norm violation was highlighted. However, we did not observe the modulation of the instructed focus on the link between gaze-based measures and empathic concern. Overall, these results provide initial evidence about the interacting impact of empathic concern as well as the focus on specific components of the norm violation when bystanders respond to unfair transgressions.

Factors Associated With Family Member's Spanking of 3.5-year-old Children in Japan.

BACKGROUND: Spanking can cause adverse psychological development and biological functional changes in children. However, spanking is widely used by parents in Japan. This study explored the risk factors for family member's spanking of 3.5-year-old children using nationwide population data in Japan. METHODS: Surveys were administered to family members in Japan who had a child in 2001 (first cohort) or in 2010 (second cohort), and the data when their child was 0.5, 1.5, and 3.5 years old were used. We used multivariate binary and ordinal logistic regression analyses to examine the associations between risk factors and spanking children at 3.5 years of age, which was subcategorized into frequencies of never, sometimes, and always spanking, presented with odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs). RESULTS: Among 70,450 families, 62.8% and 7.9% sometimes and always spanked their children, respectively. Children in the second cohort were spanked less frequently compared with those in the first cohort, and fathers who responded to the questionnaire spanked children less frequently than mothers who responded. Identified associated factors for spanking were male child, presence of siblings of the child, not living in a two-parent household, not living in a three-generation household, younger parents, parents with lower education, no outside work or unstable work, and lower family income. CONCLUSIONS: We found a high prevalence of spanking and its associated factors. Approaching those with lower socioeconomic factors and promoting fathers' involvement in parenting may be important public health strategies for reducing and preventing spanking.

Does empathy undermine justice? Moderating the impact of empathic concern for a White policeman on responses to police interracial violence.

White participants completed a measure of White guilt and read a passage describing a White police officer who shot an unarmed Black man. The victim's Facebook page information and picture indicated that he engaged in stereotypical or counterstereotypical activities in his everyday life. Participants then reported their empathic concern for the officer, perceptions of whether they thought the officer had racist motives for his actions, and their perceptions regarding the appropriate punishment for the officer. For the stereotypical victim, regardless of White guilt level, greater empathy for the officer was associated with lower perceived officer racism and less punitive responding towards the officer. In the counterstereotypical condition, the inverse association between officer empathy and the central outcome variables (perceived racism and punitive responding) was reduced for high White guilt participants. Thus, under certain conditions feelings of White guilt reduce the likelihood that empathic responding towards the officer leads to greater 'punitive leniency' for his harmful actions towards a disadvantaged group member.

When Children Treat Condemnation as a Signal: The Costs and Benefits of Condemnation.

Condemnation is ubiquitous in the social world and adults treat condemnation as a costly signal. We explore when children begin to treat condemnation as a signal by presenting 4- to 9-year-old children (N = 435) with stories involving a condemner of stealing and a noncondemner. Children were asked to predict who would be more likely to steal as well as who should be punished more harshly for stealing. In five studies, we found that 7- to 9-year-old children treat condemnation as a signal-thinking that a condemner is less likely to steal and should be punished more harshly if caught hypocritically stealing later. We discuss the implications of these results for children's emerging understanding of signaling and moral condemnation.

A multilevel analysis of racial discipline disproportionality: A focus on student perceptions of academic engagement and disciplinary environment.

Excessive use of exclusionary school discipline with Black students is a persistent, systemic problem in U.S. schools with potential to affect students' perceptions of their school. For example, students may notice racial differences in out-of-school suspensions, which may relate to how academically engaged they feel and the extent to which they view the school's disciplinary environment as positive. The current study investigated school-level racial discipline disproportionality and observed classroom-level, positive behavior supports in relation to student perceptions of academic engagement and school disciplinary environment by fitting a series of three-level models, which included data on students (N = 17,115), classrooms (J = 310), and schools (K = 53). Two metrics of discipline disproportionality were used (i.e., the risk ratio and the risk difference) and moderation was examined through cross-level interactions. Results indicated that, regardless of race, students perceived the disciplinary environment as significantly less favorable in schools with greater racial discipline disproportionality when measured by the risk ratio, but not when measured by the risk difference. Using different disproportionality metrics in education research has important implications for policies and practices to identify and address the issue. How discipline disparities relate to the way that students perceive the disciplinary environment will likely inform intervention efforts for school psychologists.