Punishing Without Looking for Reputational Gain

Critics of “outrage culture” allege that “virtue signaling” drives people to punish alleged wrongdoers without due consideration. But do people actually “punish without looking” for reputational gain? And if so, is this because unquestioning punishment looks particularly virtuous? We examined punishment without looking across three studies of Americans (total n = 7,952), in which “Actors” chose whether to sign real punitive petitions about politicized issues (“punishment”), after deciding whether to read articles opposing these petitions (“looking”). To manipulate reputation, we paired Actors with co-partisan “Evaluators”, varying whether Evaluators observed (i) nothing about Actors’ behavior, (ii) (only) whether Actors punished, or (iii) whether Actors punished and whether they looked. We found that Evaluators financially rewarded Actors who did (vs. did not) punish. And correspondingly, making punishment observable to Evaluators (i.e., moving from our first to second condition) drove Actors to punish more overall. Furthermore, because some of these individuals did not look, making punishment observable also increased rates of punishment without looking. Thus, reputation can encourage unquestioning punishment. But do punishers who eschew opposing perspectives look particularly virtuous? No: Evaluators preferentially rewarded Actors who punished with (vs. without) looking. And correspondingly, making looking observable (i.e., moving from our second to third condition) drove Actors to look more overall—and to punish without looking at comparable or diminished rates. We thus find that reputation fuels unthinking punishment, but simply as a byproduct of encouraging punishment in general. Indeed, rather than fueling reflexive decisions, spotlighting punishers’ decision-making processes can actually encourage reflection.