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Expectations do not affect punishment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 January 2025

Lucas C. Coffman
Lucas C. Coffman*
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, Harvard University, 1805 Cambridge Street, 02138 Cambridge, MA, USA
*
e-mail: coffman@fas.harvard.edu
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Abstract

Expectations-based reference dependence has been shown to be important across a variety of contexts in Psychology and Economics. Do expectations play a role in moral judgment? The higher our beliefs are relative to an outcome, do we punish more harshly? This paper reports a series of experiments investigating the hypothesis that expectations as reference points per se affect punishment. The experimental design varies the expectation the Punisher holds just before she learns what actually occurred. In tandem with the manipulation, expectations are shown to vary significantly and substantially. However, punishment does not respond to these exogenous changes in expectations. After 17 sessions, 295 Punishers, and six experimental setups, expectations are shown not to affect punishment in any systematic way.

Keywords

ExperimentsReference dependenceExpectationsPunishmentMorality

JEL classification

D63: Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and MeasurementA13: Relation of Economics to Social ValuesC92: Laboratory, Group Behavior

Information

Type
Original Paper
Information
Journal of the Economic Science Association , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , December 2019, pp. 182 - 196
Copyright
Copyright © Economic Science Association 2019

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Footnotes

Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s40881-019-00079-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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