Testing the intuitive retributivism hypothesis

Research on the question of what motivates individuals to punish criminal offenders suggests that punitive reactions are primarily responsive to retributive, but not to utilitarian, factors. Several authors have as an explanation suggested what we will call the intuitive retributivism hypothesis. According to this hypothesis, punitive reactions are the product of two distinct types of processing (type-I and type-II) which differentially support retributive vs. utilitarian punishment motives. When confronted with a case of criminal wrongdoing, type-I processing swiftly outputs a retributive reaction. In contrast, for utilitarian motives to play a role, this reaction has to be overridden by type-II processing, which rarely happens. Here, we revisit the case for the intuitive retributivism hypotheses. We review several arguments in support of it but argue that they are either unconvincing or provide only very limited support. We conclude that despite its popularity, little in the way of concrete evidence for the hypothesis exists. In light of this, the research described in this preregistration hopes to provide the first direct test of the intuitive retributivism hypothesis. To this end, we propose to investigate the effect of increased processing effort on retributive vs. utilitarian punitive reactions. Along the way, we plan to conceptually replicate Keller et al. (2010 Exp. 2).

Preregistration of: Rehren, P. & Zisman, V. (2022). Testing the Intuitive Retributivism Dual Process Model. Zeitschrift für Psychologie. https://doi.org/10.1027/2151-2604/a000461