Punitive but discerning: Reputation can fuel ambiguously-deserved punishment, but does not erode sensitivity to nuance

The desire to appear virtuous can motivate people to punish wrongdoers, an outcome that is socially beneficial when punishment is clearly deserved. Yet suggestions that “virtue signaling” fuels a culture of outrage raise the question of whether reputation concerns inspire even potentially unmerited punishment. Moreover, might reputation do more to drive punishment in ambiguous situations, where punishment is less clearly deserved, eroding punishers’ sensitivity to moral nuance? Across eight studies of Americans on MTurk and Prolific (total n = 15,472) employing vignette and behavioral paradigms, we show that reputation can drive ambiguously-deserved punishment. In situations involving politicized moral transgressions, even when subjects see the case for punishing the transgressor as relatively ambiguous, subjects expect punishers to be perceived positively by co-partisans, and themselves punish at higher rates when punishing is observable to a co-partisan audience. Moreover, reputation drives punishment even among individuals who personally question the morality of punishment, highlighting its power to push people away from their values. Yet we find no evidence that reputation erodes sensitivity to nuance by doing more to drive punishment in more ambiguous situations. In fact, subjects expect punishment to look better when more unambiguously deserved, and making punishment observable does as much or more to drive punishment in unambiguous than ambiguous situations—even when the co-partisan reputational audience is strongly ideological (and so might have been expected to encourage undiscerning punishment). We thus suggest that reputation can make people more punitive, even when facing moral ambiguity, but does not diminish sensitivity to nuance.