The Paradox of Punishment and Trust

This proposal seeks to amend the research on both punishment and trust byinvestigating the dynamic relationship between the two. Trust acts like social glue,binding organizational and interpersonal relationships. Although punishment is animportant and common event in a variety of organizational and social contexts, it cancreate a trust dilemma by pitting mercy against justice (or benevolence againstintegrity). On the one hand, punishing transgressions or delinquency helps disciplineworkforce and restore justice, but it has clear negative implications on employees whoare punished. In addition, it can also create a cruel and harsh atmosphere for observers.On the other hand, although mercy and forgiveness show sympathy and humanity,letting transgressions go unpunished (or under-punished) can appear both unfair andunjust. Thus, the current proposal investigates an important outcome – interpersonaltrust – of different resolutions of the punishment dilemma. In particular, we focus onthe effects of punishment on observers to investigate how punishment may enhance ordecrease observers’ trust because of their judgments of punishers’ intentions.Because punishers have to choose between two valid moral values (e.g., benevolence vs.integrity), observers often infer punishers’ intentions by judging how they honor orrespect these values. We suggest that observers’ trust of punishers is a primarilyfunction of the magnitude of their punishment and transgressors’ deservingness. Whena transgression or delinquency deserves to be punished, punishment should occur, andobservers are more likely to judge punishers as having integrity and being trustworthy.When a transgression or delinquency does not entirely deserve to be punished, however,observers may trust punishers less because they are more likely to view mercy orforgiveness as benevolent and trustworthy. Thus, whereas severe punishment for moredeserving transgressors will increase people’s trust of punishers, inappropriatepunishment for less deserving transgressors will reduce their trust.In addition to deservingness and the magnitude of punishment, we also investigate howpunishers’ individual characteristics can affect other people’s perceptions of theirtrustworthiness. In particular, we investigate the effects of punisher’s reputation and(potential) intentions on people’s trust. We suggest that for the same punishing acts,people will trust punishers who have a principled, value-based reputation more thanthose with pragmatic reputation. In addition, any self-benefitting punishment, evenwhen self-benefits are not intentional, will diminish people’s trust of punishers. Wepropose three complementary studies to test these propositions and explore the dynamicrelationships between punishment and trust.