Past research has demonstrated that both consequentialist motives (such as deterrence) and deontological motives (such as "just deserts") underlie children's and adults' punitive behavior. But what motives do we ascribe to others who pursue punishment? The present work explores this question by assessing which punitive motives children…

Two experiments were conducted to investigate the influences on 4-8 year-olds' and adults' moral judgments. In both, participants were told stories from previous studies that had indicated that children's judgments are largely outcome-based. Building on recent research in which one change to these studies' methods resulted in substantially more…