When citizens become aware of instances in which a person has deliberately inflicted harm on innocent others, there seems to be an immediate cognition that the harm doer “deserves punishment.” What are the psychological determinants of this cognition and what does the citizen seek to accomplish by the infliction of punishment? Of course, these questions receive a great deal of attention from scholars in fields of criminal justice, but, surprisingly, they have received considerably less attention from psychological researchers.
The research suggests that people have strong moral views that come in the form of moral intuitions when they react to harm-doing events, and second, that these intuitions are mostly driven by an assessment of what the offender justly deserves for the crime committed. Citizens sometimes chose to acquire information concerning whether the offender has offended before, suggesting a secondary concern for locking away offenders who are otherwise likely to re-offend in the future.