Parents’ Political Ideology Predicts How Their Children Punish

People often punish others for violations that do not affect them directly, even at a cost to themselves. Various motivations exist for costly punishment: people may punish to enforce cooperative norms (amplifying punishment of in-groups) or to express anger at perpetrators (amplifying punishment of out-groups). This suggests that group-related values and attitudes (e.g., how much one values fairness or feels out-group hostility) might shape the emergence of group-based punishment. The present studies (N=269, ages 3-8) tested whether children’s punishment varies according to parents’ political ideology—a proxy for the value systems and attitudes transmitted to children intergenerationally. Parental conservatism was associated with decreased punishment of in-groups, and, at the ends of the ideological spectrum, children of more conservative parents punished out-groups more than in-groups, whereas children of more liberal parents did the opposite. These findings demonstrate how variation in group-related ideologies shapes punishment across generations.