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16 - Moral Communication

from Part III - Behavior

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 February 2025

By
Friederike Funk  and
Victoria McGeer
Edited by
Bertram Malle  and
Philip Robbins
Bertram Malle
Affiliation:
Brown University, Rhode Island
Philip Robbins
Affiliation:
University of Missouri
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Summary

This chapter of the handbook consists of a two-part discussion of moral communication, highlighting the topic of punishment. In the first part, the authors focus on what makes human forms of communication distinctive, whether linguistic or nonlinguistic, and on what distinguishes moralized norms from normative attitudes and behaviors. They argue that the transgression of moralized norms is distinctive in that it tends to provoke a strong desire to punish transgressors, where such punishment has a communicative dimension. In the second part, the authors review psychological research on why people punish and discuss its communicative aspects. They propose that a communicative framework not only resolves major ongoing debates between traditional camps (retributive vs. consequentialist) but also potentially accounts for some otherwise puzzling findings. Studying the symbolic meaning of punishment along with its intended recipients opens up promising new avenues for research into factors that could modulate people‘s taste for punishment.

Keywords

reactive attitudesblamepunishmentshared intentionalitynonlinguistic communicationsymbolic meaningretributivismjustice restorationvalue consensusnorm enforcement
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Moral Psychology , pp. 382 - 406
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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