To provide greater empirical evidence that small compensations are sufficient to compensate illegitimate losses, but only large punishments are sufficient to punish illegitimate gains, we experimentally manipulated the amount of compensation given or punishment bestowed by the Observer in the same type of context as Study 1. By asking new participants to evaluate the now experimentally varied actions of this Observer, we are able to understand how people believe justice can be restored across these two types of injustices, and, critically, why.

360 participants (Median Age = 34; 46.9% female, 52.8% male, 0.3% unknown gender) were recruited from the Amazon Mechanical Turk (mTurk) online panel and paid $1.00 for completion of the study. Of those, 12 sets of responses came from participants who shared the same IP address (e.g. two completions from a single IP address). To avoid the possibility that individuals completed the study more than once, all such completions were excluded from analyses. Additionally, five participants completed the experiment faster than would be possible had they watched all instructional videos (all five completed the study faster than 4 minutes, when the videos totaled about 5 minutes in the condition with the shortest set of videos) and were excluded from the study. This resulted in usable data from 343 participants.

Next, participants answered a series of questions designed to ascertain the extent to which they believed justice had been restored and why. Specifically, to test our hypothesis that only small amounts of compensation are sufficient to restore justice when a bad thing befalls a good person, but that large amounts of punishment are necessary to restore justice when a good thing occurs to a bad person, participants were asked: “How fair is the final amount of money the Decider has?” on a 7-point scale anchored with 1 = “Not at all fair” and 7 = “Extremely fair”. To test our prediction that the smaller and larger amounts of compensation/punishment are associated with perceptions of having engaged in morally sufficient behavior, we asked participants, “To what extent has the Observer done something good?” on a 7-point scale anchored with 1 = “Not at all” and 7 = “Completely”; and “How good of a person is the Observer?” on a 7-point scale anchored with 1 = “Not at all a good person” and 7 = “Very much a good person”. To test our hypothesis that justice restoration for the bad person is based on a desire for deterrence of future bad behavior, participants indicated, “Given how much the Observer spent, how likely is the Decider to act the same away again if he or she played this study again?” on a 7-point scale anchored with 1 = “Not at all likely” and 7 = “Extremely likely”. Finally, we also asked participants “How likely would you have been to spend the same amount of money as the Observer spent?” on a 7-point scale anchored with 1 = “Not at all likely” and 7 = “Extremely likely” and to describe what they would have done had they been the Observer in an open ended text box. The two questions about what participants themselves would have done yielded little in terms of an understanding of how and why people believe that justice is differentially restored across the two conditions and so will not be discussed further. However, all data are freely available, as mentioned in the author note. Finally, the participants provided some basic demographic information about themselves.

Participants in both Injustice Type conditions were told that the Observer spent the corresponding amount of money and what that meant for the final allocations for all participants. Table 2 summarizes what participants saw in each condition. Note that because this was a fully between-subjects experiment, participants were only exposed to one of these allocations. For example, a participant in the Bad Person Injustice + $10 condition learned that the Observer spent $10, resulting in a final allocation of $85 for the Decider, $40 for the Observer, and $0 for the Receiver.

Unlike Study 1, where participants actually played the third-party observer dictator game, in this study, participants instead watched a series of videos explaining all of the actions in the game, including a final spending decision by the Observer. Because the behaviors of interest from Study 1 occurred in the Injustice conditions, in the present study, we only include the two Injustice conditions: Bad Person Injustice (Decider gains $25) and Good Person Injustice (Decider loses $25). Specifically, participants were informed that they would learn about the actual behaviors of participants from a different study. They first watched an approximately 3 minute and 30 second long video describing the set-up of the game, the random selection process of role assignment, and the five rounds of play. For participants in the Bad Person Injustice condition, this video showed the Decider keeping all $20 across each of the five rounds of play. They learned that this resulted in allocations for the three players of: Decider = $100, Receiver = $0, Observer = $50. For participants in the Good Person Injustice condition, this video showed the Decider sharing half of his or her allocation ($10) across each of the five rounds of play. They learned that this resulted in allocations for the three players of: Decider = $50, Receiver = $50, Observer = $50. Participants then answered three attention check measures designed to ensure that they carefully watched and understood the video. Next, all participants watched an approximately 40 second video explaining the injustice. For participants in the Bad Person Injustice condition, the video explained that the Decider was randomly selected to receive an extra $25, bringing his or her total to $125. For participants in the Good Person Injustice condition, the video explained that the Decider was randomly selected to lose $25, bringing his or her total to $25. Participants then answered two attention check measures designed to ensure that they carefully watched and understood the video. Next, participants watched an approximately 1 minute and 30 second video explaining that the Observer was either given the chance to take money from the Decider (Bad Person Injustice) at a rate of $4 taken away for every $1 spent or give money to the Receiver (Good Person Injustice) at a rate of $1 given for every $1 spent. Following this video, participants were randomly assigned to one of seven Amount Spent conditions: $0, $5, $10, $15, $20, $25, and $32. These amounts were chosen to reflect the most common decisions undertaken by participants in Study 1. Of note, $32 was included because it would be the minimum amount needed to remove all moneys from the Decider ($32 x 4 = $126). Although this is a strange sum to give to the Decider in the Good Person condition, we included it to maintain the fully crossed experimental design.

Results

Ten participants answered at least two of the attention check questions incorrectly and are thus omitted from all analyses. Including these participants (or additionally excluding the 51 participants who answered one of the attention check questions incorrectly) does not meaningfully change the results of our analyses.

How much compensation/punishment is required for justice to be restored across the two types of injustices? The most direct assessment of justice restoration is the extent to which, given the Observer’s actions, the Decider’s final allocation is considered to be fair. As Fig 5 clearly shows, and as confirmed by the 2 (Person Type) x 7 (Amount Spent) between subjects ANOVA on perceptions of fairness (interaction: F(5, 321) = 3.75, p = .003), the amount necessary for complete justice restoration depends on the type of injustice that transpired. When a bad event befalls a good person (Good Person Injustice), once some minimal amount of compensation is provided ($10, in this case), additional compensation does not result in greater assessments of fairness. That is, it is just as fair that the Decider ultimately received $10, $15, $20, $25, or $32 (all pair-wise comparisons p > .5). This result is consistent with the findings of Study 1; to restore an injustice that transpires against a good person, it is just as good to give a little as it is to give a lot.

In contrast, the pattern of results is quite different when the injustice is one where a bad person benefits (Bad Person Injustice). As can be seen in the same figure, perceived fairness for the Decider’s final allocation is only increased when most or all of his or her money is taken away ($25 or $32 spent). That is, as compared to $0 spent to punish the Decider, only $25 (F(1, 321) = 6.86, p = .009) and $32 (F(1, 321) = 35.19, p < .001) result in an increased perception of fairness (all other comparisons to $0, p > .1). In other words, small punishments are insufficient to restore justice; only punishments that remove all or most of the Deciders allocation result in justice restoration. Moreover, when all of the Bad Person Decider’s funds are taken away ($32 spent), justice is perceived to be as great as when the Good Person Decider is compensated as little as $10 (F(1, 321) = .61, ns). This, again, is consistent with the findings of Study 1, and further corroborates our interpretation of the Study 1 findings that if the only effective way to restore justice is to strip a Decider of most or all of his or her ill-gotten gains, then spending small amounts of money doesn’t make sense. However, spending enough to restore justice is quite costly, explaining why few people in the Bad Person Injustice condition in Study 1 ultimately chose to act at all.

Turning to why people hold such perceptions about what constitutes justice restoration, we consider two separate drivers: perceptions that the Observer’s actions are morally sufficient and the belief that the Decider will repeat his or her actions given the Observer’s behavior. For the former, we pool the responses to the two questions about the Observer: the extent to which he or she has done something good and the extent to which the Observer is a good person (r = .79, p < .001). This results in a single measure of how participants evaluated the Observer’s actions in terms of his or her moral soundness, with higher values indicating that the Observer has acted morally appropriately. As can be seen in Fig 6, and as confirmed by a similar ANOVA to the one above (interaction: F(5, 321) = 13.38, p < .001), perceptions of what constitutes sufficient moral behavior differ dramatically across injustice types. When a bad event befalls a good person (Good Person Injustice), as soon as some minimum amount of compensation is provided ($10, in this case), additional compensation does little to increase the perception that the Observer acted in a morally sound way. That is, doing nothing ($0 spent) is considered morally unacceptable. However, the Observer is seen to be just as good a person if he or she spent $10, $15, $25, or $32 (all pair-wise comparisons p > .13; spending $5 is seen as more morally acceptable than $0 (p < .001), but only slightly less than $10 (p < .01)). These results mirror the findings on perceived fairness of the compensation/punishment, providing evidence that the reason that justice is perceived to be restored with even small amounts of compensation is because a person is believed to have met their moral obligation by merely providing some (nominal) level of help.

Here, we would like to additionally point to the lack of a significant decrease in perceived morality at compensation levels above $15. If it was the case that participants were attuned to the equality between the Observer and the Decider and believed that the most just outcome was one in which the Observer compensated the Decider at an amount where both parties would have equal outcomes (i.e., the Observer and Decider end with approximately equal amounts), we should have observed a rise in perceived morality for the $10 or $15 conditions, and a drop in perceived morality for the conditions in which the Observer’s decision results in an inequality between the Observer and the Decider (with the Decider receiving more). That we do not observe this fall off suggests that, as in Study 2a, individuals are not focused on justice in terms of equality between the Observer and the Decider, but on justice in terms of restoring the Decider’s position.

We turn now to the results for individuals evaluating an Observer of a bad person who had received an unfair windfall. As with the fairness measure, the pattern of results is quite different when considering the amount spent to correct the injustice resulting from a benefit to a bad person (Bad Person Injustice). Two key findings stand out. First, regardless of the amount spent, the Observer’s actions are never seen as particularly morally sound, as compared to the Observer who compensates a victim (Main effect of Person type: F(1, 321) = 74.39, p < .001). That is, except for the case where no money is spent, the Observer is always perceived to be less morally sound when punishing the Bad Person than when compensating the Good Person. Second, and perhaps more telling, is that even though there is a main effect of Amount Spent within the Bad Person Injustice condition on the Observer’s perceived morality (F(5, 154) = 2.96, p = .01), there appears to be no systematic relationship between Amount Spent and perceptions of how morally sound the Observers actions were. That is, once the Observer spent even a little, they were seen to be just as moral as if they had spent a significant sum of money (examining all Bonferroni corrected pair-wise comparisons between spending amounts on perceptions of morality indicates only a significant difference between $5 and $32, a result that is relatively uninformative). Here, again, if participants were primarily concerned with the Observer and Decider receiving equal outcomes, we should have observed an increase in perceived morality in the $25 condition. That we do not, again, argues against a desire to simply achieve equality between the Observer and Decider.

More generally, it appears that regardless of what the Observer does, when punishing a bad person, his or her actions are seen as equally morally sound, but also, more importantly, less morally sound than a comparable Observer who compensates a good person. In other words, given that spending amount does not predict the degree to which one who punishes a bad person is morally sound, but perceptions of justice restoration are quite sensitive to amount spent, we lack evidence that when trying to restore justice by punishing, perceptions of moral soundness play a role. Thus, it cannot be the case that in Study 1, Observers who chose to punish did so because they wanted to feel as though they had done their moral duty. Instead, we propose that the other key variable, beliefs about the probability of changing the Deciders’ future behavior explains the differences in perceptions of justice restoration when punishing a bad person.

To test this possibility, we consider the degree to which participants believe that the Decider will act the same way again given the amount spent by the Observer. The argument here is that a good person is unlikely to continue to act as such if they experience negative events that are not corrected. Likewise, a bad person is unlikely to correct his or her bad ways if he or she is not sufficiently punished. As can be seen in Fig 7, and as confirmed by a similar ANOVA to the one above (interaction: F(5, 321) = 28.47, p < .001), regardless of whether an injustice occurred to a good or bad person, participants believe that greater spending will lead to more positive outcomes. When a good person has a bad event befall them, participants believe that as their compensation increases, so does the likelihood that they will continue to act as a good person (linear contrast, p < .001). Likewise, when a bad person experiences an unjust benefit, participants believe that as they are punished more, their likelihood to act selfishly again decreases (linear contrast, p < .001).

Though there is no divergence in the perceived future behavior of the Decider as a function of amount spent and injustice type, there is a significant difference in the extent to which this dimension is concordant with beliefs about justice restoration. Specifically, when a bad event befalls a good person, participants believe that the more that is spent to compensate this person, the more they are likely to act fairly again in the future. For instance, they believe that spending $25 will lead the person to act more fairly in the future than spending $15 (F(1, 321) = 3.44, p = .07) or $10 (F(1, 321) = 5.83, p = .02). Though this may well be true, as we saw above, there is no such relationship between amount spent and perceptions of justice restoration. That is, though there is an increase in perceptions of how likely the good person is to act fairly again as the amount spent to compensate them increases, there is no corresponding relationship in perception of justice restoration, suggesting that for injustices of this type, perceptions of how likely the actor is to act the same way again cannot explain responses to justice restoration.

Anticipated likelihood of future bad behavior can, however, explain responses to justice restoration for injustices that occur to bad individuals. As described above, when a bad actor benefits in some way, only near complete punishments (e.g. $25 or $32 spent) are considered to be complete justice restoration. Here, we see that this is the exact pattern observed for perceptions of how amount spent will result in the bad actor behaving the same way; there are no differences in perceptions of how likely the bad actor is to act the same way when either $5, $10, or $15 are spent (all pair-wise comparisons, p > .25), but there is a large drop in the perceived likelihood that the bad actor will again act selfishly when most or all of his or her money is taken away as compared to $15, the largest non-near complete amount spent ($25 spent: F(1, 321) = 22.72, p < .001; or $32 spent: F(1, 321) = 21.88, p < .001). Said otherwise, perceptions of justice restoration are concordant with the degree to which it is believed that a bad actor will not act badly again. Taken together with the results of Study 1, these results are consistent with the possibility that participants who chose to punish the bad person who received an illegitimate gain (who almost all did so by completely removing the Deciders’ ill-gotten gains) did so because they believed that by doing so, they were deterring future bad behavior, and only the deterrence of future bad behavior would count towards justice restoration.

A few points are worth mentioning in relation to this study. First, because we do not directly observe the motivations of participants in Study 1, an alternative interpretation of the present results is that participants in this study may have been judging the anticipated efficacy of the behavior that they observed, rather than the evaluating the underlying motivation that could have been driving the behavior they observed. That is, participants may have inferred the observer’s motivation was deterrence, or they could have inferred that deterrence was the result of the observer’s actions, without necessarily knowing (or considering) the underlying motivations of the observer’s behavior. Others have noted this distinction and have labelled them “psychological” and “biological” altruism, respectively [50]. Future work could provide clearer evidence which form of altruism drives compensatory vs. punitive behavior towards victims of unfair losses and beneficiaries of unfair gains.