CAREER: Children’s and Adults’ Perceptions of Redemption

如果有人犯了罪，违反了一个群体的规则或规范，那么这个群体的成员通常会对这个人进行负面评价。如果一个人因违法行为而被抓住并受到惩罚，在某些情况下，这个人被视为获得了救赎，例如，如果他们被视为“偿还了对社会的债务”。“然而，在其他情况下，社会并不认为这个人是被救赎的，而是认为他有固有的缺点。这些不同的看法可能取决于惩罚被视为“面向行动”还是“面向个人”。几个世纪以来，哲学家和科学家们一直在讨论与这种推理相关的道德和社会判断。这一建议旨在通过发展科学的透镜来更好地理解。目前的建议联合发展，社会和认知心理学，以及相关领域，研究人们如何作出关于救赎的判断，以及这些判断对（非）道德行为的后果。 成人和儿童将参与各种各样的场景，在这些场景中，人们违反规则并受到不同类型的惩罚。然后，研究人员将评估研究参与者如何从道德上评价违规者。通过区分行为导向型惩罚和人导向型惩罚，本文将阐明惩罚与道德评价之间的关系。此外，通过在同一范式中测试来自不同年龄组的参与者，拟议的研究将阐明认知发展机制（例如，关于人性的乐观判断的变化），预计将成为预测效果的基础。最后，通过测试关于救赎的判断的行为结果，这项工作将增加人们何时以及为什么会违反的理解。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来支持。

If someone commits an infraction, violating rules or norms of a group, then members of that group will typically apply negative evaluations to that person. If the individual is caught and punished for the infraction, in some cases the person is seen as having earned redemption, for instance if they are seen as having "paid their debt to society." In other cases, however, society does not perceive the person as redeemed, but rather as someone with inherent failings. These different perceptions may depend on whether the punishment is seen as “action-oriented” or “person-oriented.” Philosophers and scientists have discussed the moral and social judgments associated with this reasoning for centuries. This proposal aims to approach a better understanding through the lens of developmental science. The current proposal unites developmental, social, and cognitive psychology, as well as related fields, to examine how people make judgments about redemption and what consequences these judgments hold for (im)moral behavior. Adults and children will engage with a wide range of scenarios in which people break rules and receive different kinds of punishments. The researchers will then assess how study participants morally evaluate the rule-breaking individual. By delineating the distinction between action-oriented and person-oriented punishments, this work will clarify the relation between punishment and moral evaluation. Further, by testing participants from different age groups in the same paradigm, the proposed research will illuminate cognitive developmental mechanisms (e.g., changes in optimistic judgments regarding human nature) that are expected to underlie the predicted effects. Finally, by testing the behavioral outcomes of judgments concerning redemption, this work will increase understanding of when and why people transgress.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.