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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Sep 12, 2025

A Conflict Model of Reward-seeking Behavior in Male Rats

A Conflict Model of Reward-seeking Behavior in Male Rats

Published on: February 20, 2019

What people learn from punishment: A cognitive model.

Setayesh Radkani¹, Joshua B Tenenbaum¹, Rebecca Saxe¹

¹Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

|August 4, 2025

Summary

Observing punishment helps people learn social norms and authority legitimacy. However, differing beliefs can lead to polarization when punishment is witnessed.

Keywords:

Bayesian inference computational modeling legitimacy morality punishment

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Area of Science:

Cognitive Science
Social Psychology
Behavioral Economics

Background:

Authorities use punishment to enforce social norms and communicate disapproval.
Punishment ideally informs targets and observers about acceptable behavior.
However, observers also assess the punisher's motives and legitimacy.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate how observers simultaneously infer social norms and authority legitimacy from punishment.
To develop a quantitative model explaining these joint inferences.
To explore how punishment affects norm learning and polarization.

Main Methods:

Three preregistered experiments measuring human observers' joint inferences.
Development of a rational Bayesian model using an inverse planning framework.
Quantitative analysis of inferences and their interactions.

Main Results:

Human observers' inferences about norms and authority were measured empirically.
A Bayesian model quantitatively captured and explained these joint inferences.
Observing punishment sustained polarization when observers had differing priors.

Conclusions:

Understanding punishment's effects requires simultaneous consideration of norm and legitimacy inferences.
A rational Bayesian model explains the logic of learning from punishment.
Punishment can sustain polarization, highlighting a constraint on its role in establishing shared norms.