Does Personal Morality Exacerbate or Restrain Retaliation after Being Harmed?

Abstract

To examine the effect of level of moral responsibility on response to being harmed, 80 undergraduates each were initially given 10 raffle tickets. Half of the participants subsequently had 9 of their 10 tickets taken away and given to a fellow participant, whereas half did not. In each of these harm-done conditions, half of the participants were led to believe that the fellow participant intentionally took 9 of their tickets (either successfully or not), whereas half believed that the fellow participant did not intend them harm. Participants were then given a chance to take tickets from the fellow. Responses revealed two independent processes, one to reestablish distributive justice after tickets had been taken and the other to retaliate for harm intended. Level of moral responsibility had no effect on pursuit of distributive justice, but high moral responsibility restrained pursuit of retributive (retaliatory) justice. Possible reasons are proposed.