No good deed goes unpunished? Investigating punishment of moral rebels

Previous research has demonstrated that people sometimes react negatively towards others who openly express moral concerns about a specific behavior (‘moral rebels’). To date, negative reactions towards moral rebels have mainly been investigated with regard to the perceived likability of a moral rebel. Our research aims at testing whether people not only perceive moral rebels as less likeable but whether or not they also employ own money to punish moral rebels. To address this research question, we designed an experimental paradigm using a two-round ultimatum game with a bogus other player. Participants first play an ultimatum game in which they take the role of the proposer while the bogus other player is the responder. The offer of the participants in this round constitutes our first independent variable. Next, participants play another round of this ultimatum game with switched roles. The bogus other player now offers a fair split and expresses one out of two reasons for this behavior (our experimental manipulation and second independent variable): He/she either expresses that proposing an unequal split would be immoral (moral reasoning condition) or an unequal split would be economically detrimental (economic reasoning condition). As our dependent variable, we measure whether participants engage in costly punishment of the other player. We hypothesized that the more unfairly participants behave in the first ultimatum game, the more severely they punish a fair player with moral reasons in comparison to fair player with economic reasons in the second ultimatum game.