The role of attention and frames on third-party punishment and compensation choices

Bibliographic Data

ID21305752
AuthorsClaudia Civai (0000-0002-6745-2074, St George's, University of London, corresponding author), Valerio Capraro (0000-0002-0579-0166, University of Milano-Bicocca), Luca Polonio (0000-0001-6088-0482, University of Milano-Bicocca)
Year2025
Volume263
Pages106192
Publication date2025-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueCognition (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0010-0277 • E-ISSN: 1873-7838
PublisherElsevier BV (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1016/j.cognition.2025.106192
PMID40414147
OpenAlexW4410704605
LanguageEN
References cited67

People often forgo their own self-interest to react to fairness and justice violations, even when not directly affected by the infraction. There are different ways to react to an injustice: some may prefer to punish the perpetrator, and others to compensate the victim. Here, our focus is on the role played by attention to determine these choices, investigating the relationship between attentional mechanisms and punishment/compensation in five preregistered experiments ( N = 1157). Two eye-tracking experiments showed that people who focus more on the offender's payoff are more likely to punish, and when an exogenous stimulation increases the focus on the offender's payoff, people spend more to punish. An offender bias was also found, meaning that people, overall, prefer to focus on the offender's, rather than the victim's, payoff, and punish more than compensate. This was confirmed in three behavioural experiments, where people were exposed to either the offender's or the victim's payoff: when given the choice, people prefer to reveal the offender's payoff, and then punish; however, when randomly exposed to the victim's payoff, the preference for punishment disappears. Affective empathy boosts this effect: higher empathy leads to more punishment (or compensation) when the offender's (or victim's) payoff is revealed. These findings suggest that, whilst people have an intrinsic motivation to search for information that matches their preference (i.e., the offender's payoff and punishment), when exposed to an alternative piece of information (i.e., the victim's payoff), they modify their behaviour. Implications for understanding information bubbles and ways to overcome them are discussed. • People may respond to injustice by punishing offenders or compensating victims. • Visual attention (eye-gaze) predicts choice: a focus on offenders leads to punishment. • People focus more on offenders' outcomes than on victims' outcomes. • Re -directing bottom-up the visual focus on victims' outcomes reduces punishment. • Exposing people to information they would not seek out can shift choices

Cognitive psychology · Compensation (psychology) · Punishment (psychology) · Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies · Psychology · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment · Social and Intergroup Psychology · Social Psychology

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