Retribution versus rehabilitation as motives for support of offender’s punishment: the moderating role of mindsets about malleability

ABSTRACT

We examined whether beliefs about malleability moderate observers’ motives for justice, expressed in a desire for either retribution, in which punishment is based on what offenders deserve for their offense (past-oriented), or rehabilitation, in which punishment is intended to improve the offenders (future-oriented). The main hypothesis was that people with a fixed mindset would tend to support punishment motivated by retribution rather than rehabilitation, and the reverse was expected for those with a malleable mindset. We recruited participants (N = 432) through the platform Prolific and asked them to complete an online questionnaire. We first manipulated participants’ mindset (malleable vs. fixed) and then the salience of a specific justice motive (retribution vs. rehabilitation). Finally, participants read a vignette depicting an incident of professional misconduct and were asked to indicate their support for the punishment of the offender. Our results did not confirm our main hypothesis, but the exploratory results indicated a partial confirmation as a function of political orientation: in the malleable mindset condition, support for punishment among liberals was higher in the rehabilitation condition than in the retribution condition, whereas the reverse effect was observed among moderately conservative participants. We discuss the possible limitations of the study and future research avenues.

KEYWORDS:

• Justice motives
• retribution
• rehabilitation
• punishment
• professional misconduct
• mindset about malleability

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. All the data were stored in a data repository and can be obtained at https://osf.io/6gvz8.

2. More specific information can be obtained from the first author on request.