CAREER: Children’s and Adults’ Perceptions of Redemption

如果有人犯了违规行为，违反了某个群体的规则或规范，那么该群体的成员通常会对该人进行负面评价。如果个人因违规而被抓获并受到惩罚，在某些情况下，此人被视为已获得救赎，例如，如果他们被视为“向社会偿还了债务”。然而，在其他情况下，社会并不认为这个人是被救赎的，而是认为他有与生俱来的缺陷。这些不同的看法可能取决于惩罚被视为“以行动为导向”还是“以人为本”。几个世纪以来，哲学家和科学家一直在讨论与这一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视角更好地理解。目前的提案将发展心理学、社会心理学、认知心理学以及相关领域结合在一起，研究人们如何对救赎做出判断，以及这些判断对道德行为产生了什么后果。成年人和儿童会遇到各种各样的场景，在这些场景中，人们会违反规则，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在道德上评价违反规则的个人。通过区分行为导向的惩罚和以人为导向的惩罚，这项工作将澄清惩罚和道德评价的关系。此外，通过在同一范式中测试来自不同年龄段的参与者，拟议的研究将阐明认知发展机制(例如，对人性的乐观判断的变化)，这些机制有望成为预测效果的基础。最后，通过测试有关赎回判决的行为结果，这项工作将增加对人们何时以及为什么违法的理解。这一裁决反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.