Punishment without reason: Isolating retribution in lay punishment of criminal offenders.

Research has suggested that criminal punishment decisions are driven primarily by retribution and that retributive judgments are achieved by a process of abstract moral reasoning. However, problems with construct validity limit confidence in these conclusions. Study 1 (N 254) used experimentally manipulated vignettes to isolate retributive motives. Participants’ sentencing recommendations were strongly provoked by indices of retribution (criminal intent) even when the most common consequentialist reasons for punishment (offender dangerousness and publicity of punishment) were minimized. In an exploratory fashion, Study 2 (N 49) used a semistructured interview to examine whether participants would persist in punishing a hypothetical offender without explicit reasons. Participants persisted in their original punishment judgments even when unable to justify the reasons for these judgments. These results increase confidence that lay punishment is motivated by retribution, but also suggest that this motive may be better explained by fallible, heuristic processes than by abstract moral reasoning. Implications for legal policy are discussed.