Third-party punishment, vigilante justice, or karma? Understanding the dynamics of interpersonal and cosmic justice

People around the world both engage in both interpersonal punishment and expect supernatural punishment of wrongdoers. That is, people will impose costs and withhold benefits from transgressors, and they expect bad things to happen to transgressors more often than to good people. Evolutionary theories have proposed that both interpersonal and supernatural justice beliefs result from similar motivations, cognitive mechanisms, and cultural evolutionary processes that bind human beings into cooperative groups. To explore these ideas, three preregistered studies (N = 3,430) investigated situational factors and individual differences that shape reactions to interpersonal and supernatural justice. Perceived appropriateness of both interpersonal justice and supernatural justice depended on recipients’ past moral actions, with more positive impressions when antisocial actions and bad outcomes befell previously antisocial victims. However, third-party interpersonal punishment was viewed far more negatively than interpersonal reprimands or supernatural punishments, especially when the potential punisher was unaware of the victim’s past transgressions. Explicit belief in karma significantly moderated perceptions of harmful outcomes not caused by human agents, but karma belief was largely unrelated to perceptions of harm caused by humans. Together, results reveal distinct factors that predict judgments about interpersonal punishment and karmic punishments, and provide insight into the distinct dynamics of interpersonal and supernatural justice.