Collective apologies moderate the effects of justice concerns on support for collective punishment

Following an offense, various justice concerns arise, and people might support the punishment of the offender’s entire group to restore a sense of justice (even if the other group members are innocent). We hypothesized that support for collective punishment might increase along one’s justice concerns, and that such effect can be hindered by the group’s collective apologies. In three studies, third-party observers were presented with various cases of aggression and we measured (Study 1) or manipulated (Studies 2 and 3) their justice concerns. In all studies, the presence (vs. absence) of collective apologies was additionally manipulated. The results confirmed our hypothesis thereby increasing our knowledge of both the determinants of collective punishment and the potential effects of collective apologies.This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 703401Social decision makin