Punishing to Communicate or Retaliate? Honor Shapes Motivations across Cultures

We investigated the communicative function of personal punishment. In four scenarios with US (N=213) and Turkish (N=207) participants, we found that people who have strong communicative motives preferred sending messages alongside punishment (b=0.96, p<.001), but honor values reduced these motives (b= –0.30, p =.003) while amplifying retaliative motives (b=0.22, p=.02).