Wilfried Hommers, Norman H. Anderson

• Children's judgements of deserved punishment were studied as function of three moral variables. Subjects judged how much a child in a story should be punished for ruining another's stamps, given information about (a) how many stamps were damaged, (b) the culpa, or intent, of the harmful act, and (c) recompense, or the proportion of stamps paid back by the offender. In three experiments, recompense had substantially greater effects than the damage for which recompense was made. This pre-potency of recompense was greater at younger ages across aChildren's judgements of deserved punishment were studied as function of three moral variables. Subjects judged how much a child in a story should be punished for ruining another's stamps, given information about (a) how many stamps were damaged, (b) the culpa, or intent, of the harmful act, and (c) recompense, or the proportion of stamps paid back by the offender. In three experiments, recompense had substantially greater effects than the damage for which recompense was made. This pre-potency of recompense was greater at younger ages across a range from 4 years to college age. Damage and culpa were integrated by an additive rule in agreement with previous work. In contrast, the recompense-damage and recompense-culpa integration rules were both non-additive.…