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Punishment regulates selfish behaviors and maintains cooperation. However, because punishment imposes costs on another person, it could also harm relationships. The current work asked how punishment shapes 5- to 10-year-olds' (Study 1; n=128) and adults' (Study 2; n=159) attitudes toward punishers and those who receive punishment as well as their inferences about relationships between punishers and targets. We reasoned that the motives underlying punishment might shape evaluations; punishments motivated by prosocial desires may elicit more positive responses than punishments motivated by antisocial desires. We tested both motives that were external to the punisher (the behavior that elicited the punishment) as well as internal motives (the desire to harm versus rehabilitate transgressors). The main result is that we found negative social relationships among punishers, targets, and observers. Both children and adults preferred punishers who inflicted punishment for behaviors that violated (versus did not violate) norms, preferred targets of punishment who had not (versus had) violated norms, and expected punishers and targets to dislike each other. External motives, but not internal motives, consistently influenced participants’ own social preferences. In contrast, neither external nor internal motives consistently shaped participants' inferences about social relationships between punishers and their targets. Our work contributes to social cognitive development by clarifying how motives shape children's and adults' understanding of social relationships. 

Punishment can serve as a form of communication: People use punishment to express information to its recipients and interpret punishment between third parties as having communicative content. Prior work on the expressive function of punishment has primarily investigated the capacity of punishment in general to communicate a single type of message – e.g., that the punished behavior violated an important norm. The present work expands this framework by testing whether different types of punishment communicate different messages. We distinguish between person-oriented punishments, which seek to harm the recipient, and action-oriented punishments, which seek to undo a harmful action. We show that people interpret action-oriented punishments, compared to person-oriented punishments, to indicate that the recipient will change for the better (Study 1). The communicative theory can explain this finding if people understand action-oriented punishment to send a message that is more effective than person-oriented punishment at causing such a change. Supporting this explanation, inferences about future behavior track the recipients' beliefs about the punishment they received, rather than the punisher's intentions or the actual punishment imposed (Study 2). Indeed, when actual recipients of a person-oriented punishment believed they received an action-oriented punishment and vice versa, predictions of future behavior tracked the recipients' beliefs rather than reality, and judgments about what the recipients learned from the punishments mediated this effect (Study 3). Together, these studies demonstrate that laypeople think different types of punishment send different messages to recipients and that these messages are differentially effective at bringing about behavioral changes. 

Stories about redemption are ubiquitous; people emphasize moral improvement when describing their own lives and, often, others' lives as well. However, psychology does not yet have a well-developed literature concerning redemption, and developmental science has not addressed questions regarding how perceptions of redemption might emerge or change between childhood and adulthood. To the extent that past research has spoken to this issue, it has pointed in contradictory directions. Two different theories—focusing on essentialism and on optimism—make two different developmental predictions about how and why judgments of redemption might change with age. Integrating these perspectives, we propose a novel theory of redemption that puts work on essentialism and optimism in conversation with each other. The theory of redemption further highlights the role of social inputs (e.g., experiences with their own and others' moral change) as mechanisms that can lead children to hold more redemptive views than do adults. The theory of redemption accounts for previous findings in developmental science and makes novel predictions regarding the social inputs and consequences of redemptive views. 

Punishment is a key mechanism to regulate selfish behaviors and maintain cooperation in a society. However, children often show mixed evaluations about third-party punishment. The current work asked how punishment severity might shape children's social judgments. In two studies, 5- to 10-year-old children heard about a punisher who took different numbers of items from a transgressor and evaluated the punisher's behavior and moral character. In Study 1 (n=68), when the transgression was relatively mild (i.e., unfair sharing), children across ages evaluated taking no items from the unfair sharer ("no punishment") most positively, while evaluating taking three items ("harshest punishment") most negatively. In Study 2 (n=68), when the transgression was more serious (i.e., stealing), younger children evaluated taking two items ("equality-establishing punishment") more positively than older children, while evaluating taking none most negatively. However, children became more likely to evaluate equality-establishing punishment negatively with age. Overall, the current results show that punishment severity is a key factor underlying children's third-party punishment judgments. The current research extends work on moral development by showing how children conceptualize the severity of punishment. 

Legal theorists have argued that incarceration and alternative sanctions are incommensurable – that is, beyond some crime severity threshold, replacing incarceration with alternative sanctions can never yield a sentence that people will view as appropriate (Kahan, 1996). To test whether laypeople hold this view, we elicited lay judgments about appropriate sentences for four common types of federal crimes in two different conditions: One in which participants could impose only a term of imprisonment and another in which they could impose imprisonment along with alternative sanctions. Laypeople imposed significantly less imprisonment in the latter condition and significant quantities of alternative, non-carceral sanctions. Consistent with the view that imprisonment is commensurable with other sanctions, and particularly with restraint-based sanctions, laypeople substituted supervised release almost one-for-one for imprisonment. In addition, they increased imprisonment and supervised release at similar rates as crime severity increased. Next, using individual-level sentencing data from similar cases in the federal courts, we found that judges’ sentencing decisions showed similar relationships between crime severity and both imprisonment and supervised release. However, laypeople imposed dramatically larger fines and more hours of community service than did federal judges, and laypeople tied the use of these alternative sanctions more directly to crime severity. These findings suggest that federal judges do not view fines and community service as commensurable with incarceration. As a result, current criminal sentencing practices deviate from community views by placing excessive emphasis on incarceration and paying insufficient attention to alternative sanctions. 

Can moral rules change? We tested 129 children from the United States to investigate their beliefs about whether God could change widely shared moral propositions (e.g., “it’s not okay to call someone a mean name”), controversial moral propositions (e.g., “it’s not okay to tell a small lie to help someone feel happy”), and physical propositions (e.g., “fire is hotter than snow”). We observed an emerging tendency to report that God's ability to change morality is limited, suggesting that children across development find some widely shared aspects of morality to be impossible to change. Some beliefs did shift over development, however: 4- to 6-year-olds did not distinguish among God’s ability to change widely shared moral, controversial moral, and physical propositions, whereas 7- to 9-year-olds became increasingly confident that God could change physical and controversial moral propositions. Critically, however, younger children and older children alike reported that widely shared aspects of morality could not be altered. According to participants, not even God could change fundamental moral principles. 

Religious involvement is prevalent in prisons, a context where questions of moral redemption are particularly salient. We probed the developmental origins of adults’ perceptions that religion might lead to redemption following transgressions. Six- to eight-year-olds (n = 50 United States residents) and adults (n = 53 United States residents) learned about incarcerated characters who had taken religion classes, art classes, or life classes (about right and wrong) while imprisoned. They then rated their agreement with statements assessing attitudes toward the incarcerated individuals, the effectiveness of each character’s time in prison, and their likelihood of recidivism. Children were more likely than adults to report that classes, in general, would effectively rehabilitate incarcerated individuals. However, participants of all ages reported more positive attitudes toward people who took religion classes and life classes rather than art classes. Further, participants of all ages reported that people who took art classes, versus religion or life classes, would be more likely to continue transgressing. These findings highlight the important role that religious and secular learning plays in perceptions of redemption across development. 

Abstract Although children exhibit curiosity regarding science, questions remain regarding how children evaluate others' curiosity and whether evaluations differ across domains that prioritize faith (e.g., religion) versus those that value questioning (e.g., science). In Study 1 (n = 115 5‐ to 8‐year‐olds; 49% female; 66% White), children evaluated actors who were curious, ignorant and non‐curious, or knowledgeable about religion or science; curiosity elicited relatively favorable moral evaluations (ds > .40). Study 2 (n = 62 7‐ to 8‐year‐olds; 48% female; 63% White) found that these evaluations generalized to behaviors, as children acted more pro‐socially and less punitively toward curious, versus not curious, individuals ( = .37). These findings (data collected 2020–2022) demonstrate children's positive moral evaluations of curiosity and contribute to debates regarding overlap between scientific and religious cognition.