A new study into punishment psychology across cultures shows that when people respond to a wrong, they balance two aims: making the victim whole and preventing future harm. The research, led by Léo Fitouchi of the Toulouse School of Economics and Manvir Singh of the University of California, Davis, compares a small-scale society in Indonesia with a WEIRD sample from the United States.
The model tested by the researchers posits that moral outrage motivates victims to seek two kinds of compensation. First, direct restitution for material loss, and second, an additional penalty designed to deter repeat exploitation and protect against reputational damage that can invite future theft.
In the Mentawai, a rainforest-horticulturalist community in Indonesia where justice is often handled within families rather than by a central government, the researchers arranged nine scenarios involving property damage. The offenders typically paid a fine, or tulou, using resources such as pigs, chickens or fruit trees. A total of 74 Mentawai participants took part in the study; half were asked to prescribe an appropriate fine, while the other half ranked scenarios by the level of anger the act provoked.
One scenario introduced an extra-harm condition: a thief steals a pig but, in doing so, inadvertently causes the death of the victim’s piglets. The thief achieves the same personal gain as in a standard theft, while the victim suffers a higher cost.
The results showed a clear link between moral outrage and the fines imposed. Mentawai participants insisted on restitution in the exact currency of the loss—pigs to replace stolen pigs and coconuts to replace felled trees. When extra harm occurred without any additional benefit to the offender, outrage rose and fines increased accordingly.
A further pattern emerged regarding deterrence: fines almost always carried an extra penalty beyond simple replacement of the lost property. Repeat offences, signalling higher vulnerability to future exploitation, provoked greater outrage and larger fines, while accidental offences—indicative of lower risk of recurrence—generated lower outrage and smaller penalties.
To test whether these dynamics hold in a modern, industrialised setting, the researchers conducted a parallel experiment with 600 participants in the United States, adapting the scenarios to a rural farming context. The vignettes described disputes over cows, hogs and vegetable gardens, with the value of the damaged assets stated in dollars (a cow at $1,500 and a hog at $500). Participants again prescribed fines in dollars and rated their outrage numerically.
The American findings mirrored the Mentawai results. Moral outrage predicted the size of the fines, and scenarios involving extra harm prompted heavier penalties. Like the Mentawai sample, Americans tended to accept an additional punitive element beyond straightforward restitution in most offences, and they, too, responded more strongly to repeat offences.
However, there were nuances. About half of the American participants judged accidental harms as not requiring an extra penalty at all, focusing solely on replacing the destroyed property’s value.
The study concentrated on private grievances between individuals, such as property damage or theft, and explicitly notes that community-wide crimes may be governed by different dynamics. The Mentawai data were collected under logistical constraints, resulting in a relatively small sample, and the researchers acknowledge that only two populations were examined. They call for broader cross-cultural research to better map the universality and limits of punitive psychology.
The research is titled “Retributive Sentiments Track Both Deterrent and Compensatory Concerns in a Small-Scale Society and a WEIRD Sample” and is authored by Léo Fitouchi and Manvir Singh.
