Costliness and Social Context Shape Punishment and Partner Rejection Decisions

Punishment and partner rejection are two ways an actor can respond to a target's uncooperative behavior. We examine how the normativity of the transgression in its social context and the costliness of the response to the target differentially impact these two responses. When considering underperformance, an ambiguous transgression, we anticipated that (a) actors would be more likely to respond when the transgression is counternormative, (b) partner rejection would be more sensitive than punishment to normativity, (c) actors would be more likely to respond when the cost to the target is low, and (d) punishment would be more sensitive than partner rejection to costliness. Across three studies (N = 543), we found support for all hypotheses except the fourth. Our findings suggest that normativity has a unique, dissociable impact on partner rejection, while the aversion to enacting a high-cost response does not depend upon having future interactions with the target.