The Role of Negative Emotions and Attentional Control in Children's, Adolescents' and Adults' Punishment

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People's interpersonal behaviour is regulated by social and moral norms, and violations of these norms are often met with punishment. This project seeks to study what affects children's, adolescents', and adults' punishment of norm violators by combining research in developmental, experimental, and social psychology and experimental economics. We will focus particularly on how negative emotions, such as anger, influence punishment in children, adolescents, and adults. Furthermore, we are interested in how attentional control, that is disengaging attention away from negative information and thoughts, moderates when and how negative emotions affect punishment. Punishment is one mechanism responsible for the emergence and maintenance of moral behaviour. Studying children's, adolescents', and adults' punishment and the role of negative emotions in punishment will help us shed more light on how moral behavior develops over human ontogeny.We will employ two experimental economic paradigms often used to study punishment, namely the ultimatum game and the third-party punishment game. The ultimatum game assesses second-party punishment, that is punishment by an individual who is a direct victim of the violation of a norm. The third-party punishment game measures whether people are willing to enforce a norm by punishing a norm violator even if they themselves are not affected by the violation. Both games study punishment as reaction to the violation of norms of fair sharing. Participants in all three studies will consist of 8-year-old children, 14-year-old adolescents, and undergraduate students. The influence of attentional control on negative emotion processing and punishment will be assessed in two ways. First, the age groups tested have been shown to differ in their attentional control skills (as measured by a questionnaire) with children showing weaker attentional control than adolescents and adults. Second, attentional control will be manipulated experimentally in adult samples: In a distractor condition, before making a punishment decision, adult participants will be presented with a digit span task for 30 seconds. In a wait condition, participants will have to wait for 30 seconds before making a punishment decision.We will conduct six interrelated studies to investigate the role of negative emotions and attentional control in the development of punishment. Studies 1a and 1b will investigate (1) whether punishment of unfair behavior in ultimatum and third-party punishment game is associated with an increase in skin conductance responses (a measure of emotional activation) and negative emotional ratings; and (2) whether the relation between emotional reactivity (skin conductance, emotion ratings) and punishment is modulated by attentional control. Studies 2a and 2b will examine (1) whether anger (induced by watching film clips) affects punishment in ultimatum and third-party punishment game; and (2) whether children and participants in a low attentional control condition show higher punishment than adults, adolescents and people in a high attentional control condition. Studies 3a and 3b will assess how induced anger affects third-party punishment versus compensating the victim of a violation. We expect (1) that anger, compared to a neutral mood, will increase third-party punishment and decrease third-party compensation; and (2) that the effect of anger on punishment and compensation will be moderated by attentional control.