Older children's third-party punishment decisions are more sensitive to severity than younger children's.

Abstract

Maintaining cooperation requires responding to wrongdoing by, for example, punishing transgressors. However, we do not respond to all transgressions similarly: as adults, we are more likely to pursue the punishment of certain transgressions compared to others. This study (N = 213) looked at how presenting different transgressions may shape the developmental trajectory of third-party punishment behavior in children. Specifically, we tested whether children would be more likely to punish property destruction and theft compared to unfairness at earlier ages and, if so, whether this difference is related to perceptions of severity. We presented children with three transgression types (unfairness, property destruction, and theft). We then measured children's severity ratings and costly third-party punishment behavior. Both younger and older children rated property destruction and theft as worse than unfairness. Despite this, neither older nor younger children punished one kind of transgression more than another, suggesting that children's third-party punishment behavior is not especially sensitive to transgression type. However, exploratory analyses revealed that, independent of transgression type, older children were particularly inclined to punish what they perceived as worse actions compared to younger children, who largely did not punish at all. These results suggest that older children's third-party punishment decisions show signatures of being more sensitive to severity than younger children's. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).