There are two broad funct
ional explanat
ions for second-party pun
ishment: f
itness-level
ing and deterrence. The former suggests that people pun
ish to reduce f
itness d
ifferences, wh
ile the latter suggests that people pun
ish
in order to rec
iprocate losses and deter others from
infl
ict
ing losses on them
in the future. We explore the relat
ive roles of these mot
ivat
ions us
ing a pre-reg
istered, two-player exper
iment w
ith 2426 US part
ic
ipants from Amazon Mechan
ical Turk. Part
ic
ipants played as the “responder” and were ass
igned to e
ither a Take or Augment cond
it
ion. In the Take cond
it
ion, the “partner” could steal money from the responder's bonus or do noth
ing. In the Augment cond
it
ion, the partner could augment the responder's bonus by g
iv
ing them money at no cost to themselves or do noth
ing. We also man
ipulated the responders' start
ing endowments, such that after the partner's dec
is
ion, responders exper
ienced d
ifferent payoff outcomes: advantageous
inequ
ity, equal
ity, or vary
ing degrees of d
isadvantageous
inequ
ity. Responders then dec
ided whether to pay a cost to pun
ish the partner. Pun
ishment was clearly
influenced by theft and was most frequent when theft resulted
in d
isadvantageous
inequ
ity. However, people also pun
ished
in the absence of theft, part
icularly when confronted w
ith d
isadvantageous
inequ
ity. Wh
ile the effect of
inequ
ity on pun
ishment was small, our results suggest that pun
ishment
is mot
ivated by more than just the des
ire to rec
iprocate losses. These f
ind
ings h
ighl
ight the mult
iple mot
ivat
ions underg
ird
ing pun
ishment and bear d
irectly on funct
ional explanat
ions for the ex
istence of pun
ishment
in human soc
iet
ies.
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