Speaker 1: 0:01

But the consequences will eventually arrive and harsh punishment will damage the climate in a group, in a company, in a community. But I think there's this real warning from history that overly harsh punishment is quite damaging and destructive.

Speaker 2: 0:17

Welcome back to the Management Theory Toolbox, your top destination for uncovering the why behind management and business concepts. If you're an executive manager, consultant or business student and you want to dive into a scientifically rooted discussion of management theory, then you're in the right place. Our journey studying management began with a cosmic philosophical inquiry into the concept of emergence, which led us to realize that organizations are not exactly these well-oiled machines that everyone talks about, even if that metaphor is sometimes useful. Instead, they are better thought of as living human systems, and in episode 7, we introduced the human brain as a metaphor for understanding organizations, given the similarities between organizations as complex adaptive systems and neural networks.

Speaker 2: 1:12

Neurons are connected, synapses firing between them, information being shared, stored, bonds being strengthened or weakened, reshaped and redefined. Just like each neuron in the brain is connected to others, forming groups, so too are individual people in an organization, and we use that analogy to talk about the reward systems in the brain and how that relates to positive psychology. Today, we're going to look at blame and punishment. Just as the brain uses various inhibitory transmitters to bind to neural receptors, thus strategically reducing their activity, so too, blame and punishment are often used as negative feedback mechanisms in an attempt to maintain balance and proper functioning in an organization. But what exactly are blame and punishment and how do they work?

Speaker 3: 2:03

Oh, what's this? That is a demerit, jim. Halpert, tardiness oh, I love it already. You've got to learn, jim. You are second in command, but that does not put you above the law. Oh, I understand, and I also have lots of questions like what does a demerit mean? Let's put it this way you do not want to receive three of those. Lay it on me Three demerits and you'll receive a citation. Now that sounds serious. Oh, it is serious. Five citations and you're looking at a violation. Four of those and you'll receive a verbal warning. Keep it up, and you're looking at a written warning. Two of those that'll land you in a world of hurt, in the form of a disciplinary review written up by me and placed on the desk of my immediate superior, which would be me. That is correct. Okay, I want a copy on my desk by the end of the day or you will receive a full desadulation. What's a des? What's that? Oh, you don't want to know.

Speaker 2: 3:00

Our study of operant conditioning has found that in some circumstances, behavioral contingencies or rules as Dr Malott called them in episode 12, are sometimes powerful behavior management tools, especially if the consequence of a particular action is immediate, significant and likely to occur. So that means we should impose immediate, sizable consequences on undesirable behavior in the workplace and we'll quickly get the results we want. Right? If you've been listening to the Management Theory Toolbox, I'm sure you can guess my next words. It's more complicated than that, in fact. Just like Dwight's attempt to reprimand Jim backfired on him in that clip from the Office, so too can blame and punishment quickly backfire in the workplace. One reason for this is that punishment itself is often a violation of norms. Now, before we go on, I should explain what a norm is, since that's a term often used by philosophers. Wait, does this mean we're in for a philosophical tangent? No, not yet. That'll come later.

Speaker 2: 4:04

In philosophy, norms refer to the unwritten rules that govern our behavior within a society or group. These norms dictate what is considered acceptable or unacceptable, guiding our actions and interactions. Think of them as the social glue that helps maintain order and predictability in our daily lives. Norms can be as simple as saying thank you, or as complex as moral codes that shape our ethical decisions. They are not just rules imposed from above, but are created and reinforced by the community evolving over time as our collective values and beliefs change. Clearly, this is going to be a bit of a complicated issue, so, as usual, we're going to need some help, and we're fortunate enough to have with us today Dr Bertram Malle. Hi, bertram, and welcome to the show. Hi Travis, I'm very glad to be here. So, before we get started, go ahead and introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your background and your work.

Speaker 1: 5:01

Yeah, so I'm Bertram Malle. I'm at Brown University in the Department of Cognitive, linguistic and Psychological Sciences. I grew up in Austria. I was trained in philosophy, linguistics and psychology and more and more got into psychology, got my PhD at Stanford and then had my first job at the University of Oregon in an interdisciplinary setting, and that continued at Brown. My work really has spanned questions of social cognition, moral judgment and recently quite a bit of human-robot interaction, artificial intelligence and related topics.

Speaker 2: 5:37

Thank you for joining us and I'm honored to have you on the show. So in recent episodes we've been talking about behavior modification in employees, and today we want to talk about a particular reinforcement contingency, which is punishment. Now, as I understand it, there's multiple ways of defining and categorizing punishment. Could you help us first understand how you define and categorize punishment, especially in an organizational setting?

Speaker 1: 6:04

Punishment is sometimes used as a term to cover all sanctions, that is, all responses to transgressions. I think it makes much more sense to think of punishment as a class of sanctions that are quite specific and it basically is a response to a transgressor's norm violation that puts a penalty, often a severe penalty, on that person. An act of punishment is normally a norm violation itself. I might harm you, I might harm your reputation, I might physically do something to you. I need justification to do this for it to count as constructive punishment. That means often punishment comes from an institutional role, from a position of power, and it often is very asymmetric. The person who punishes puts the cost, puts the penalty on the other, and the other can often not respond. It's often unchangeable. Once I punish that's what happened when I criticize you I can take back my criticism, but once I harm you, hurt you, those penalties are there with you. So that's a narrower definition of punishment, but I think it's very important to distinguish it from what we will talk later about, namely blame.

Speaker 2: 7:18

Now, from your research, what are some of the common misconceptions or overlooked aspects about the role of punishment in moral psychology, and how do those misconceptions impact organizational practices?

Speaker 1: 7:30

The first is really a continuation of what I said earlier, namely to misidentify punishment with all other forms of response to known violations. We think of punishment as this more narrow, strong penalty that we put on others transgressors. If we think of punishment as this more narrow, strong penalty that we put on others transgressors, if we think of punishment as this more narrow response to norm violations, there is a strong assumption in the literature that punishment fosters cooperation, that at least the threat of punishment in groups makes free riders, norm violators, less likely to take on that opportunity to free ride. There is some evidence that this is true. But this is very often true in fairly constrained settings, often in game-theoretically defined behavioral economics settings.

Speaker 1: 8:18

In the more complex social world, punishment is often too strong of a response. It's the heavy artillery that in educational research, developmental research and in behavioral research suggests is a very last resort, that there are many other forms of responding to a violation that should precede punishment in order to reserve it only for the situations in which there's almost nothing left. No criticism helps, no corrective or encouraging action helps, and punishment is the last resort. The other misconception is that punishment is considered to be evolutionarily old. We've always punished each other, but, as we might discuss a little later, punishment is relatively new because it comes from a position of power and institutions. It is probably only about 12,000 years old since humans settled down and built larger societies with greater hierarchical institutional structure.

Speaker 2: 9:17

Do you think that the reluctance to punish, especially in modern organizations in the corporate world, for example, stems from the fact that the employees who receive a punishment do actually have a recourse, which is to leave, and that's very damaging to the company itself?

Speaker 1: 9:34

Yes, that's certainly one recourse, but there are even other things that employees who feel hurt and harmed by punishment can do. Namely, they can sabotage parts of the company, they can retaliate, they can sow the seeds of more conflict. That may still also hurt them, but retaliation is very costly, where both sides take on more and more costs only to harm the other. So, even before they leave, those who are punished, who are especially punished too harshly, will put destructive forces into the organizational structure. And that's what people often don't recognize that punishment has not only immediate costs of hurting, but also long-term costs for the community.

Speaker 2: 10:21

Now, is this reluctance to punish a culturally specific result? In other words, do some cultures tolerate, accept or even encourage punishments as a behavior modification tool more than others?

Speaker 1: 10:48

punish and in what forms they punish. There's a paper from 2013 by Bayer and van Lange, which was published in Perspectives on Psychological Sciences and looks at punishment and related phenomena across 18 societies and it's very clear that variation is substantial. But I would go even further and say not only between societies do we find variations, but across history do we find substantial variation? If you think about the harsh punishments, even in legal, justified and at least at those times settings, punishment was just absolutely brutal. Nowadays we have restrained ourselves somewhat. There's a form of civilizing punishment and yet it is still a very high cost that we put on each other. So you see, possibly punishment varying across time, across societies, across different companies and across different people who take the opportunity, for example, of a position of power and use it to punish or restrain themselves and use the mildest form of correction that they can come up with.

Speaker 2: 11:51

In your opinion, what's the balance between punitive measures and restorative approaches in addressing those norm violations with organizations, and how does that balance affect the overall moral climate?

Speaker 1: 12:04

The balance in the legal setting between penalties and restorative processes is quite a sad asymmetric one.

Speaker 1: 12:12

There are movements of increasing restorative justice and possibly even transformative justice processes, but we are still very much dominated by strong punitive responses to crime and violations In organizational settings.

Speaker 1: 12:30

Clearly there is much less of this strong punitive orientation because of the costs to the individuals involved, to the community. But restoration is still a very complex process and unless you have similar norms in place for how to respond to violations and how possibly those who were punished or at least criticized might act to restore their own standing, their own role in the community, unless you have all these norms, it becomes amorphous and then maybe there's more room for retaliation and more room for destruction. So just as we have norms that prevent violating actions to occur, we can and should have norms for how we respond to norm violations. That is fundamentally the advantage of the law that it specifies quite strongly what these responses are, though they may still be sometimes asymmetrically and unjustly applied. At the very least they're made transparent, they're made explicit. If you have punishment that's unregulated and unfortunately online we have quite a bit of these unregulated responses then we cannot form restorative acts as easily, because it's unclear whether they will be successful or not.

Speaker 2: 13:46

Yeah, and thinking about our legal system, so much of it. If we look through the legal codes, it seems like it's almost entirely punitive. You fail to do this, you're going to get this fight or you're going to get this punishment imposed upon you, and there's very little restorative focus. And I'm curious if you think that positive psychology can play a role in this.

Speaker 1: 14:11

One of the motivations of positive psychology has certainly been to shift the focus from negative to positive, from destruction to construction, from biases and flaws to strengths, and the transition from thinking only in terms of punitive measures when transgressions happen to possibly constructive or reconstructive measures is what I think people who care about positive psychology would think about.

Speaker 1: 14:37

But it has not dominated the literature. The work that you might look for is really more in the sociological literature, a tiny bit in the social psychological literature, and sadly our institutional structures, as you said, have focused on responses to violations rather than thinking about prevention, encouragement, low-cost admonition, warning, maybe forming allegiances that don't let non-violations even happen. And I think that that's similar to health. We can respond in our healthcare system to illness and to damages, or we can think about prevention that those illnesses and damages may not even happen in the first place or might be much milder. And I think this is one of the deep challenges of large societies of strangers that we always respond. We react to negative events rather than trying to anticipate them and to build forces towards a more positive future.

Speaker 2: 15:43

Now can you help us understand the interplay between individual moral judgments and collective norms within an organization and how this dynamic influences decisions related to punishment and reward?

Speaker 1: 15:57

There's certainly a distinction between what people sometimes call individual moral convictions, and those are sometimes more extreme forms of norms and values that individuals arrive at and maybe justify for themselves. But fundamentally, moral judgments are made in light of norms. Norms are always collective and moral judgments, when made in a community, need to obey the norms both of the original action. I can only make a negative moral judgment if a norm existed that somebody violated. I can only make a positive moral judgment, such as praise, if somebody's behavior exceeded the expectation. What happens then when the moral judgment actually is uttered as a social act?

Speaker 1: 16:43

There are new norms that govern how appropriate that moral judgment was, and I think this is another aspect of morality that's often overlooked that not only are there first-order norms for how we are supposed to behave, but there are second-order norms that govern how we are supposed to respond to violations of these first-order norms. And this is where again, to bring up online behavior, where these norms of how strongly we can criticize, how harshly can we point out somebody's violation, are much more loose, are much less regulated and the costs of being absolutely mean and horrible are much lower. If in an organization, during a team meeting, you really go after somebody, you chide them for a mistake they made, you are violating norms, and that itself becomes a serious problem for the team.

Speaker 2: 17:35

So even the act of punishment itself can be a violation of norms.

Speaker 1: 17:42

Absolutely, and in fact that's why I said earlier, punishment is often situated in an institutional role. The boss can punish. The employee cannot punish the boss unless indirectly, through reputation-damaging gossip or through leaving, as you mentioned earlier. But punishment and many other forms of responding to violations are normally governed by rules that make sure it is a fair response, a proportional response. It doesn't mean we don't violate these norms. We sometimes punish too harshly if our power position allows us to. But the consequences will eventually arrive and harsh punishment will damage the climate in a group, in a company, in a community. And historically we see that some cultures that had extremely harsh punishment did not succeed, did not maintain the health and peace in their community, and often there's an escalation between harsher punishment and more crime. There's a whole literature on this issue, but I think there's this real warning from history that overly harsh punishment is quite damaging and destructive.

Speaker 2: 19:02

So that's interesting because the overall sense of what I'm getting from this conversation is a series of warnings for leaders about using punishment, and that seems to dovetail very well with that overall reluctance that you pointed out to actually punish. I'm curious if that's always the right response. If there are situations where that reluctance is hindering an appropriate response that should have been taken, that reluctance is hindering an appropriate response that should have been taken, and leaders may need to have a little bit more courage to confront some of these messy issues head on when they arise.

Speaker 1: 19:36

I absolutely agree. But we have to recognize that punishment is only one of the tools with which we can respond to violations, to maybe even looming violations. The reluctance to punish comes in part from the recognition that punishment is a rather harsh and maybe dangerous tool. So we have to think about what other tools we have. We have, as I said, tools of prevention, tools of criticism, tools of maybe constructively working on the betterment of the process that we're in the situation, that we're in the team that we're forming, rather than individually singling out the single transgressor, thinking about how the community as a whole, the team as a whole, the organization as a whole can improve that.

Speaker 1: 20:23

There are other tools available. We may not need to use punishment. Reluctance is then fully justified. But it doesn't mean we leave violations be. It doesn't mean that there aren't sometimes situations where this last resort needs to be taken. Somebody has to be fired. They are such poison to the community. No way can you expect that after the third or fourth attempt to change the person's behavior, to change the situation, is there really hope for improvement. But there are many other steps before, many other tools that are available that might be actually more constructive and more successful because they don't come with all the additional harms and damages that punishment often comes with.

Speaker 2: 21:07

I think this brings up a philosophical tangent, and I wouldn't do justice to our listeners without queuing up our usual mysterious soundtrack. There we go. If we look at this from an ethical perspective, it reminds me of a utilitarian approach. For those who might not be familiar, utilitarianism is an ethical system that essentially weighs the negative consequences of an action against the positives and chooses the one that produces the most overall good or minimizes the overall harm. In simple terms, it's like saying the ends justify the means. The classic example is the trolley problem.

Speaker 2: 21:47

Imagine a train hurtling down a track toward five people tied up and unable to move. You have the power to pull a lever and divert the train onto another track where only one person is tied up. A utilitarian would argue that pulling the lever, even though it sacrifices one person who would otherwise not have been harmed, is the right action because it results in the least overall harm. That's kind of what I sense happening here. We might decide that firing someone or enforcing a harsh punishment is necessary because, overall, it causes the least harm. As you mentioned, this person could be so detrimental to the community that removing them, despite the significant costs and risks associated with such punishment, as you've laid out is better than the alternatives. This contrasts with virtue ethics, which might argue that punishment carries some intrinsically negative moral qualities that we should avoid.

Speaker 1: 22:42

Yeah, I don't really believe in innate, intrinsic, essentialist conceptions of values, norms, punishment. But I'm also not the utilitarian in the sense that all that counts are consequences, but rather, as we discussed earlier, punishment is embedded in a set of norms, not just those first-order norms about acting appropriately but punishing appropriately. So these norms guide the forms and conditions under which we might punish and which other tools we might choose instead. And the norms have formed over time, most likely by responding to consequences. So I think there's sometimes a misunderstanding that there's a contradiction between a more norm-oriented ethical system and the utilitarian system.

Speaker 1: 23:35

A community would not maintain certain norms if they weren't successful in the long run. If the consequences of that norm system, of that community weren't visible, we would have to change something. If our community is too loose, too tight, that means the consequences feed back into the norm system. But we cannot calculate the consequences of our actions anywhere near the way utilitarians theorize. We follow norms because the norms are a helpful shortcut to make sure that we continue something that seems to have worked in the community, and that includes punishment. If the norm puts punishment as a last resort, that's probably a good reason for that, because costs of harsh punishment have been observed. Similarly, if suddenly no response to norm violations occur, that would lead to negative consequences and soon the norms might have to change and we have to reinstitute some form of criticism, some form of response that puts at least mild penalties on norm violators.

Speaker 2: 24:42

Now shifting to the topic of blame, which you make a distinction between punishment and blame, can you tell us what are some of the psychological mechanisms behind blaming in workplace settings?

Speaker 1: 24:52

When we talk about blame we need to distinguish between really two forms of blame. One form is in the head. I might observe your behavior and I might, in my head, really disapprove of your behavior. I might analyze it further and I might think that you really deserve quite a bit of blame for something you did, something you said, but I might not, that you really deserve quite a bit of blame for something you did, something you said, but I might not express it. The psychological processes that govern this in-the-head blaming are cognitive and they are partially affective.

Speaker 1: 25:23

But for the most part we look at a behavior in light of norms. It begins with a negative evaluation, disapproval, and we typically quite naturally ask questions about was that intentional or not? Did the person have reasons that might justify it? Could the person have done better or not?

Speaker 1: 25:41

When we go to public blame, which is the second form of blame, socially expressed moral criticism, as we might call it then all of those cognitive processes are still in place, but now the social community puts constraints on them. I might, in my head, be unfair in blaming you In public. That unfairness is probably going to have costs for me. I might be criticized for falsely accusing you, for unfairly over-blaming you. So once you're in the social, in the expressed form of blame, the benefits of a community that has norms of how we respond to transgressors Now puts shackles on blame, and blame can become at least more fair, more constructive, and I think that this is something we need to learn to blame well, to blame with the minimum amount of affect, with the minimum amount of hurting the other, and still get the major job done to have the person recognize that they transgressed and to encourage them to change in the future.

Speaker 2: 26:50

In my previous organization we had this explicit principle of depersonalization, so if somebody made a mistake we would intentionally depersonalize and ask what can we fix in the process that would prevent this from happening in the future, and I always felt like this really helped to provide a psychologically safe environment and provide internal regulation. Could this approach mitigate some of the biases and complexities that might go into our attributions of blame in the public setting specifically?

Speaker 1: 27:21

Yeah, I think this is a very valuable and difficult approach and it is particularly useful in communities and organizations where there are relatively low levels of intimacy, where blame and punishment in its more fully-fledged form would impose a lot of costs, and costs that are hard to correct. In a very intimate relationship you can criticize the person, but there are many paths to undo, to correct, to improve that relationship. Because of the level of intimacy you are less hurt by somebody because you know that they fundamentally love you, that they're fundamentally committed to you, and then, when they criticize you, that it's more about this action, this particular pattern, this particular pattern. In large organizations the costs are so high that distributing the criticism, distributing the problem, might be a very successful way of doing it.

Speaker 1: 28:19

Transformative justice has as the fundamental idea that you need to transform the community in order to help change the individual transgressor's behavior. Somebody transgressed. The analysis is that this was not just that person's fault. It was that person in the community as a complex system. So in order to change the future, we can't just fix the person or lock them away, but we need to understand where it came from and what the community did to permit, to encourage that particular transgression Very difficult. The legal system is really not ready for that. But an organization that tries to do this has, I think, a greater success in minimizing the costs of criticism, blame and punishment, but still getting to the goal of improving the future.

Speaker 2: 29:11

So thank you, and this was fascinating. Before we sign off, can you tell our listeners how they can find you and your work?

Speaker 1: 29:17

Sure. So if you just Google my name and Brown University, you will find a number of links, including the Brown faculty directory. I also have a lab page for which I created a simple bitly so it's bitly slash SCSRL, the Social Cognitive Science Research Lab. But really Google is pretty good at picking up either one of the lab pages or my faculty directory. Google Scholar is also a page where you can find links to many publications, and my lab page has links to many publications as well. Great, thank you.

Speaker 2: 29:57

Wow. That opened up a lot of new insight into blame and punishment. As Dr Amale describes it. There's some complications, since not only is the act of punishment sometimes against social norms, but contextual norms also develop that define appropriate constraints on punishment. A great example of these topics is in a clip from Season 4, episode 12 of the Office, where we see Michael Scott trying to discipline Stanley Hudson by staging a fake firing. Michael's reluctance to actually fire Stanley mirrors a common hesitation among managers, who often avoid severe penalties due to the potential high costs, such as lawsuits and damaged morale.

Speaker 4: 30:38

Okay, everybody shh. Earlier today, Stanley sassed me and Toby gave me some suggestions on how to discipline him. They did not work, obviously because they were stupid, so I am now going to fake fire him. What does that mean? It's like a mock execution. It's not a good idea. Yes, it is a good idea. It's the only possible solution I have left well, you can actually fire no, okay, why are you telling us this? Because I want you to behave as if I'm actually firing him.

Speaker 5: 31:08

Oscar, okay, michael, if you hadn't told us this, then we would have thought that you were actually firing him.

Speaker 4: 31:14

I'm not firing him, I'm not. I need you to act like I am firing him. Just what I'm going to do is I'm going to pretend that I'm firing him and I need you to act like I am firing him. Do you get that? Do you get it? I'm teaching him a lesson. He needs to learn humility. All right, that's all. I'm Okay. Here he comes, let's just play it. Stanley, may I talk to you for a second? Stanley Hudson, you are fired. Are you serious? I am serious, we are all serious.

Speaker 5: 31:45

You're firing me over three words. Have you lost your mind? Do you think I'm gonna let you do this to me? I've watched you screw up this office for ten years and I'm filing a lawsuit and I'm gonna tell them about every stupid thing you've ever done up in this office.

Speaker 4: 32:00

Alright, alright, okay, you know what? Now you know how I feel this was a fake firing. Lesson learned Good work, everybody, very nice. So.

Speaker 5: 32:09

I'm not fired.

Speaker 4: 32:11

That's it, and uh, do you have anything to say to me?

Speaker 5: 32:16

Oh, yes, I do. You are out of your little pea-sized mind. What is wrong with you? Do you have any sense at all? Okay, do you have any idea how to run an office? Yes, every day you do something stupider than you did the day before, and I think there's no possible way he can top that. But what do you do? You find a way to top it. You are a professional idiot. Hey, stop it.

Speaker 2: 32:43

The situation began with Michael explaining to his team that previous disciplinary measures suggested by Toby have failed and he sees the fake firing as his only option, which, of course, reflects the idea that punishment should be a last resort, as noted by Dr Malley. When Michael goes through with the fake firing, though, stanley reacts with anger and threatens legal action. This immediate backlash highlights the risks of harsh or poorly thought out punishments, which can increase conflict and cause more harm than good. Michael's tactics also violate workplace norms, which can be seen as a transgression in itself. Dr Mollet talks about how punishment needs to be fair and constructive, but Michael's approach is anything but Instead of fostering humility, it exacerbates tensions and damages Michael's credibility. Finally, this incident disrupts the psychological safety of the workplace. Stanley's public criticism of Michael only adds to the tension, demonstrating how poorly executed punitive measures can undermine trust and respect within a team. Michael's fake firing strategy in the office is a prime example of how not to handle workplace discipline. It shows the importance of considering the broader implications and potential unintended consequences of punitive actions, aligning closely with Dr Mollet's insights on effective management. If you're a manager dealing with performance issues, it's crucial to reflect on the broader implications of any disciplinary actions you might take.

Speaker 2: 34:21

Consider all possible corrective measures before resorting to punishment. But if you must proceed with punitive actions, follow these guidelines. First, reflect on norms. Understand the cultural norms regarding punishment in your organization or team. This will help ensure your actions are aligned with accepted practices and are perceived as fair. Second, deliver the punishment as quickly as possible following the undesirable behavior, to reinforce the connection between the action and the consequence. Also, target the punishment at specific behaviors that have been clearly action and the consequence. Also target the punishment at specific behaviors that have been clearly communicated to the employee. This helps avoid confusion and ensures the employee understands what behavior needs to change.

Speaker 2: 35:03

Administer the punishment in an objective, impersonal manner to prevent personal biases from influencing your decision and to maintain professionalism. Lastly, before taking any action, listen to your employee's explanation. This can provide valuable context and may influence the severity or type of punishment you decide to implement. By following these steps, you can better handle disciplinary issues in a fair, effective and constructive manner, minimizing negative impacts on the organizational climate. So with that, thank you for joining me on another episode of the Management Theory Toolbox. Stay tuned for our next episode, where we talk about extinction. No, not the extinction of a species like dinosaurs, but you'll have to wait until our next episode to find out what that means in the context of organizational behavior. In the meantime, keep learning, keep growing and keep adding to your management theory toolbox. Thank you.