Supplementary Materials for: Who may punish how? The Influence of Punisher Status, Transgression Type, and Justice Sensitivity on the Assessment of Punishment Motives in Middle Childhood

According to the intuitive retributivism hypothesis, individuals favor retributivist (getting even) over consequentialist (prevention of norm transgressions) motives when asked to rate the appropriateness of punishment responses representing these motives. This hypothesis was hardly tested in children; restorative motives (norm clarification, settlement) and potentially influencing variables were hardly considered. We had 170 elementary school children (M = 9.26, SD = 1.01) rate the appropriateness of six punishment responses by themselves and teachers for two types of norm transgression and their justice sensitivity. Children rated punishment responses thought to represent restorative motives as most appropriate, followed by special preventive and other retributive motives, revenge, general preventive motives, and doing nothing across perspectives. Transgression type did not influence appropriateness ratings. Justice sensitivity was related to a stronger tendency to punish. Findings favor intuitive pacifism over intuitive retributivism, indicate children’s preference for target-specific, communicative punishment, and show only small influences by other variables. Supplementary materials for: Strauß, S., & Bondü, R. (2022). Who may punish how? The influence of punisher status, transgression type, and justice sensitivity on the assessment of punishment motives in middle childhood. Zeitschrift für Psychologie, 230(2), 174–184. https://doi.org/10.1027/2151-2604/a000463 unknown unknown