Deterring Bad Behavior Through Collective Punishment
Grace Geyer
Co-Presenters: Mackenzie Michener, Venu Gandhi
College: College of Liberal Arts
Major: Psychology
Faculty Research Mentor: Peter Kardos
Abstract:
Collective punishment is a practice where an entire group is punished for the wrongdoing of one of its members. This project explored if people were more likely to avoid bad behavior if the consequence was collective punishment rather than individual punishment. We hypothesized that collective punishment would incentivize better behavior because participants would anticipate worse intragroup consequences when there was collective punishment. A lab study was conducted where participants were incentivized to cheat. Depending on the condition, they would run the risk of collective or individual punishment if they were caught. Another online scenario-based study was conducted to test the same hypothesis. The findings show that people were significantly less likely to cheat when collective punishment was the consequence. This work has been supported by the Students Partnering with Faculty research grant for the 2024-25 academic year.