Time Delay, Retribution, and Emotional Regulation
Retribution and Emotional Regulation:
The Effects of Time Delay in Angry Economic Interactions
Cynthia S. Wang
National University of Singapore
Niro Sivanathan
London Business School
Jayanth Narayanan
National University of Singapore
Deshani B. Ganegoda
University of Central Florida
Monika Bauer
Galen V. Bodenhausen
Keith Murnighan
Northwestern University
Address all correspondence to:
Cynthia S. Wang
NUS Business School
Mochtar Riady Building, BIZ 2, Storey 8
15 Kent Ridge Road, Singapore 117592
Phone: (65) 6516 3519
cswang@nus.edu.sg
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Time Delay, Retribution, and Emotional Regulation
ABSTRACT
Individuals driven by negative emotions often punish non-cooperators at a cost to
themselves. The current research demonstrates that, although time delays can attenuate
this effect, they can also produce unintended consequences. Five experiments
investigated the effects of time delays and thought patterns on punishments in direct and
third party interactions. The results show that time delays decreased punishment
(Experiment 1) by reducing negative emotions (Experiment 2A and 2B). However,
thought patterns during a delay were crucially important (Experiments 3A and 3B):
people who engaged in a distraction task punished less; people who engaged in affective
rumination punished more; and people who engaged in cognitive reappraisal were
unaffected by a delay. These differences meant that, after a time delay, affective
ruminators administered greater punishments than cognitive reappraisers or distracted
individuals. Implications of these findings for managing punitive impulses via time
delays are discussed.
Keywords: time delay, retribution, emotional regulation, anger
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Time Delay, Retribution, and Emotional Regulation
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Retribution and Emotional Regulation:
The Effects of Time Delay in Angry Economic Interactions
“When angry, count to ten before you speak. If very angry, count to one
hundred.”
- Thomas Jefferson
Anger can lead to costly behavior. From ViaCom CEO Summer Redstone‟s
decision to pay $1.5 billion more than he intended for Paramount Pictures (Greenwald,
Allis, McCarroll, Booth, & Ressner, 1994) to PeopleSoft CEO Craig Conway‟s battle to
block the company‟s sale at a significant cost to its shareholders (Weinberger, 2004), the
corporate arena is rife with manifestations of anger leading to costly outcomes. Anger
seems to blind otherwise rational individuals, derailing their normally deliberative
thought-action repertoires (Fredrickson, 1998; 2001) by replacing them with rapid,
heuristic judgments (Bodenhausen, Sheppard, & Kramer, 1994). Unfortunately, people
often have tremendous difficulty restraining their costly aggressive impulses when they
are angry (Berkowitz, 1993).
The current research investigates the effects of an intuitively appealing (but not
often tested) behavioral intervention, commonly prescribed to reduce the likelihood and
vehemence of costly retributive action – introducing a time delay before permitting a
response to a transgression (e.g., Gelfand & Brett, 2004; O'Connor & Adams, 1999; Ury,
Bret, & Goldberg, 1988; Walton, 1969). In particular, we investigate when and how
people punish unfair negative actions, with a specific focus on the potential effects of
short time delays on anger-fueled retributive action. We also investigate the impact of
costly punishments that provide no monetary benefit, even in the distant future, to the
Time Delay, Retribution, and Emotional Regulation
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punisher. Although punishment may provide collective benefits by maintaining social
order (Campbell, 1990; Wang & Leung, 2010), we focus our attention and theorizing on
costly punishing.
In Experiments 1-2B, we test the basic premise that short time delays can
diminish retribution. We also test whether these effects depend on punishers‟ cognitions
during a time delay. Thus, in Experiments 3A-3B, we show that some kinds of cognitions
can actually lead to increased punishment, even after a time delay. In all five
experiments, we investigate punishment decisions in two salient contexts: ultimatum
rejections (i.e., when people reject small take-it-or-leave-it offers) and third-party
punishments (i.e., when people punish individuals who have taken advantage of others).
Our research provides two novel theoretical contributions. First, although bargaining
texts have often suggested that negotiators should take a break when anger might interfere
with their strategic choices and actions (e.g., Adler, Rosen, & Silverstein, 1998; Doner, 1996;
Gelfand & Brett, 2004; Goleman, 1995; Hendrix, 1995; O'Connor & Adams, 1999; Ury, et
al., 1988), there is little empirical evidence to support these suggestions. Second, we show
when and how this common advice can not just fail, but backfire.
Time Delay
Effectively managing anger requires considerable self-control (Loewenstein,
1996; Muraven & Baumeister, 2000). In general, emotions typically arise from contact
with specific objects (Frijda, 1993; Isen, 1984; Lazarus, 1991): as individuals become
further removed from a specific emotion-arousing object, their associated emotions often
dissipate (Fridhandler & Averill, 1982; Tyson, 1998). Since emotions have a relatively
short lifespan and anger dissipates quickly (Fridhandler & Averill, 1982), the common
Time Delay, Retribution, and Emotional Regulation
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recommendation of taking time to “cool off” before making important decisions may
prove especially effective. A time delay can increase the distance between individuals‟
focal decisions and the object of their anger, both temporally and psychologically. Time
delays in negotiations and conflict resolution, for instance, are supposed to help
bargainers focus on their ultimate goals and aspirations rather than on the cause of their
anger (e.g., Adler, et al., 1998; Doner, 1996; Gelfand & Brett, 2004; Goleman, 1995;
Hendrix, 1995; O'Connor & Adams, 1999; Ury, et al., 1988).
Research has recently begun to investigate these effects. Finkel, DeWall, Slotter,
Oaten, and Foshee (2009), for instance, found that short time delays reduced people‟s
tendencies to entertain violent thoughts after a partner had angered them. In contrast,
Harinck and De Dreu (2008) found that a break not only failed to improve outcomes in a
dyadic integrative negotiation, but had detrimental effects. They noted, however, that the
cooperative context of the negotiations they studied might have impeded the emergence
of negative emotions. In addition, neither of these two studies measured retributive
behavior.
Sutter, Kocher and Straub (2003) tested the effects of time pressure on people‟s
responses to ultimatum offers, requiring a response in either 10 or 100 seconds in each of
nine rounds of offers. First round offers in this study averaged just over one-fourth of the
10 Euro endowment in both conditions; 59.7% of the time-pressured offers were rejected
versus only 21.8% of the unpressured offers. This difference disappeared, however, on all
of the 8 subsequent rounds of offers. These results provide preliminary evidence for the
benefits of time delay but they do not examine the underlying cause of the effects. To
expand on this research, we investigate the causes of these effects and extend the
Time Delay, Retribution, and Emotional Regulation
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phenomenon‟s domain to two distinct contexts – direct and third-party economic
exchanges. In addition, we draw on the emotion regulation literature (Gross, 1998) to
identify when and why time delays are effective, ineffective, and even potentially
deleterious.
The Upside and Downside of Time Delays
People can influence when and which emotions they experience and how they
express them. Gross and his colleagues (Gross, 1998; Ray, Wilhelm, & Gross, 2008)
have suggested that this regulatory behavior depends on three distinct patterns of thought:
distraction, i.e., shifting attention away from the immediate situation (Derryberry &
Rothbart, 1988); reappraisal, i.e., reanalyzing and reinterpreting past events less
emotionally; or rumination, i.e., focusing on distress symptoms or the person‟s negative
emotional state (Sukhodolsky, Golub, & Cromwell, 2001). While time delays may help to
reduce a person‟s negative emotions, their cognitions during a delay may also contribute
to determining whether a time delay will result in reduced punishments.
Distraction. Distraction can help people suppress their negative emotions by
shifting their attention from a negative, emotion-laden situation to an alternative, less
emotion-provoking situation. By creating thought patterns that are unrelated to the angerarousing event, distraction can help emotions dissipate (Kalisch, Wiech, Herrmann, &
Dolan, 2006). Counting ceiling tiles (Nix, Watson, Pyszczynski, & Greenberg, 1995),
performing math equations (Van Dillen & Koole, 2007), or playing a game of Tetris
(Holmes, James, Coode-Bate, & Deeprose, 2009), for example, may help people subdue
their negative emotions. Although not privy to this research, Thomas Jefferson‟s
suggestion of counting to 10 uses the same theoretical rationale.
Time Delay, Retribution, and Emotional Regulation
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The difficulty with distraction, however, is that it is not always feasible: some
situations may be so compelling that distraction becomes ineffective. In these instances,
rumination or reappraisal are potential alternatives.
Rumination. Research using both self-reported and physiological measures suggests
that rumination maintains and exacerbates negative emotions (Bettencourt, Talley,
Benjamin, & Valentine, 2006; Ray et al., 2005; Ray et al., 2008; Siegle, Steinhauer,
Thase, Stenger, & Carter, 2002; Segerstrom, Tsao, Alden, & Craske, 2000). When people
ruminate about anger-inducing events, their thoughts tend to reactivate their emotions
(Denson, Pedersen, & Miller, 2006; Sukhodolsky, et al., 2001). Bushman (2002), for
example, found that venting (e.g., taking out aggression in a non-retaliatory way) was
less effective at reducing anger than letting it dissipate naturally, because venting
required a recall of the original negative experiences, which re-aroused anger
(Fridhandler & Averill, 1982; Tavris, 1984; 1989). Also, since rumination reactivates hot
emotions, it can delay anger‟s dissipation and stimulate continued aggressive reactions
(Bushman, Bonacci, Pedersen, Vasquez, & Miller, 2005). As a result, people who
ruminate tend to retaliate more often (Collins & Bell, 1997) and with greater fervor than
those who ruminate less (Caprara, et al., 1987).
Reappraisal. Holmes and Murray (1996), however, noted that people can detach
themselves from their emotions by cognitively approaching an event in a broad, positive
manner. Unlike rumination, reappraisal lets people reanalyze and reinterpret past negative
events coolly (Ray et al., 2008). Reappraisals consider alternative interpretations of
negative events (Gross, 2001) and the negative events‟ relevance to a person‟s goals
(Ray, et al., 2008). Rather than re-activating negative emotions, reappraisal encourages
Time Delay, Retribution, and Emotional Regulation
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people to think more objectively, even with a sense of detachment (e.g., Ray et al., 2005).
In essence, reappraisal is much like rumination without its associated emotions (Lazarus,
1991; Ray et al., 2008; Scherer, 2001).
Thus, reappraisal may lead to reduced punishing. Neurological evidence is
consistent with this expectation: a small ultimatum offer led to people experiencing
heightened brain activity in the anterior insula, which is associated with negative
emotions, and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which is associated with cognition.
Rejections of these offers, however, were only associated with heightened activity in the
anterior insula, not the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (Sanfey, Rilling, Aronson, Nystrom,
& Cohen, 2003), suggesting that hot negative emotions, rather than cool cognitions, drive
costly punishment decisions. As a result, reappraisal should be more effective than
rumination in tempering negative emotions and reducing punishments.
The Current Research
To our knowledge, the combined effects of emotional regulation and time delays on
punishing behavior have not been empirically investigated. In five experiments, we tested
the prediction that, following a negative event, a time delay will lead to a reduction in
punishing behavior for people who reappraise or for people who are distracted, but it will
lead to an increase in punishing behavior for people who ruminate. We also predicted that
the important mediator in the time delay plus emotional regulation  behavior process
will be negative emotions. We investigated costly punishing behavior by both the victim,
i.e., direct punishment, and by a third-party oberver (Sutter et al., 2003).
Experiments 1, 2A, and 3A used the now-classic ultimatum game (Güth,
Schmittberger, & Schwarze, 1982), a mixed-motive interaction in which one party, the
Time Delay, Retribution, and Emotional Regulation
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offerer, is endowed with a fixed sum of money and can offer any portion of it to a second
party, the responder, who can accept or reject the offer. Acceptance results in the
responder getting the amount offered and the offerer retaining the rest; rejection results in
both parties receiving nothing.
Game theory suggests that, because responders start with nothing and any positive
offer gives them positive utility, responders should accept all offers, even those that are
extremely small. In practice, however, responders often reject offers that are less than
25% of the total, even when the stakes are high (Roth, 1995). By doing so, responders
sacrifice the value of their offers, i.e., their rejections are costly.
A common explanation for these costly rejections is negative emotions (Binmore,
Shaked, & Sutton, 1985). Loewenstein (1996) suggested that negative emotions play a
central role in the decision to punish, and Pillutla and Murnighan (1996) found that spite
and anger led to many rejections of small ultimatum offers. Neurological evidence also
finds increased activity in the anterior insula, the area associated with negative emotions,
when responders reject less-than-equal ultimatum offers (Sanfey et al., 2003).
Individuals also punish people who are unfair, deceptive, or uncooperative towards
others, even strangers (e.g., Fehr & Gachter, 2002), at a direct cost to themselves (Fehr &
Fischbacher, 2004a). Anger tends to fuel these third-party punishments (Darley &
Pittman, 2003; Fehr & Fischbacher, 2004a; 2004b; Nelissen & Zeelenberg, 2009;
Seymour, Singer, & Dolan, 2007) more than a sense of obligation or cognitive rationality
(Carlsmith, 2006; Carlsmith, Darley, & Robinson, 2002; O'Gormana, Wilson, & Miller,
2005). For instance, Buckholtz et al. (2008) found that, as third-party punishments
increased in magnitude, so did the activity in a punisher‟s amygdala and medial
Time Delay, Retribution, and Emotional Regulation 10
prefrontal cortex, areas of the brain that are consistently linked to emotions (Amodio &
Frith, 2006; Barrett, et al., 2007; Lieberman, 2007). This suggests that unfair,
inappropriate, or counter-normative social action, even when it is directed at others (Bies
& Tripp, 2002), can trigger anger and mobilize people to engage in costly punishing
behavior (Bosman, Sutter, & van Winden, 2005; Brosig, Weimann, & Yang, 2003;
Pillutla & Murnighan, 1996; Wang, Galinsky, & Murnighan, 2009). Thus, Experiments
2B and 3B tested whether time delays would influence the punishing behavior of thirdparties who had observed an untrustworthy act.
Experiment 1
Method
Participants and design. Forty-nine undergraduates (25 women) from a major
university in Singapore received course credit for their participation and were told that
they could receive additional money based on their decisions in the experiment.
Participants were randomly assigned to make their decisions immediately, after a 5minute delay during which they wrote down a string of numbers increasing in value, or
after a 5-minute delay with no explicit instructions of what to do during the delay, i.e., a
one-factor, three-level between-subjects design.
Procedure. Participants‟ instructions, displayed on a computer screen, indicated
that they would each be interacting in an ultimatum game over a computer network with
another participant, an “offerer” who started with an endowment of $10 (but did not
actually exist). All of the offers were $2, i.e., less than 25% of the endowment, which
make them prime targets for rejection (Roth, 1995).
Participants in the no delay condition were asked for their accept-or-reject decision
Time Delay, Retribution, and Emotional Regulation 11
immediately after they received the offer. Participants in the delay condition with counting
read the following instructions: “Before you make your decision, please start writing
numbers, starting at 1, and increasing in increments of one (e.g., 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ....). Please
continue to write down numbers until the next page appears.” The computer screen then
displayed a text box in which they could record numbers. After 5 minutes, the screen
prompted participants to make their accept-or-reject decision. Participants in the delay
condition with no instructions saw a 5-minute on-screen message indicating that the
computer was processing information from other participants and that the next screen
would appear shortly. They then saw the screen that prompted them to make their decision.
Participants immediately received the payoff that was associated with their
choice: if they accepted the offer, they received $2 and the offerer supposedly received
$8; if they rejected the offer, both parties received no money.
Results and Discussion
People rejected over three times as many offers (proportionally) when they made
their decision immediately (47.8%) compared to the time delay conditions (14.8%). A
binary logistic regression analyzing the effects of time delays on the choice to accept
(coded as 0) or reject (coded as 1) was significant, Wald = 5.92, p = .05 (see Table 1 for
Experiment 1-2B results). Immediate choice participants were marginally more likely to
reject the offer (47.8%) than people who experienced a time delay without instructions
(16.7%), Wald = 2.99, B = -1.52, SE = .88, p = .08, and significantly more likely than
people who counted numbers during their time delay (13.3%), Wald = 4.24, B = -1.79, SE
= .87, p = .04. The latter two conditions were not significantly different, Wald = .06, B =
.26, SE = 1.09, p = .81.
Time Delay, Retribution, and Emotional Regulation 12
Experiment 1 suggests that a 5-minute distraction and, to a lesser extent, a 5minute open-ended delay, reduced costly rejections of low ultimatum offers. These
results are consistent with Thomas Jefferson‟s advice – counting did reduce costly
aggressive punishments. These data document the effect but do not illuminate the
decision makers‟ psychological processes. Thus, Experiments 2A and 2B investigated our
prediction that a time delay would reduce anger and ultimately punishments in both
ultimatum and third-party contexts.
Experiment 2A
Method
Participants and design. Ninety-six (49 females) undergraduates from a major
university in Singapore received course credit for participating; they were randomly
assigned to either a delay or a no delay condition, i.e., a one-factor, two-level betweensubjects design. Like Experiment 1, they were told that they would earn the actual
monetary amounts in the experiment.
Procedure. The game procedures were identical to Experiment 1‟s except that
each offer was now $1 (even more unfair) and did not include the delay-distraction
condition. Participants experienced either no delay or a 5-minute delay with no
instructions. After the screen prompted participants to make their accept-or-reject
decision, participants were asked, “After you received the offer, did you feel: 1 =
“extremely disgruntled” to 7 = “extremely pleased”? This item (reverse-coded) provided
a measure of their anger. Thus, our two dependent variables were their accept-or-reject
choices and their self-reported feelings of anger.
Results and Discussion
Time Delay, Retribution, and Emotional Regulation 13
More than three-fourths of the participants in the no delay condition rejected the
offer (39 of 51; 76.5%) compared to 57.8% (26 of 45) in the delay condition, a significant
difference: Wald = 3.74, B = -.003, SE = .001, p = .05. Also as predicted, participants who
experienced the delay reported feeling significantly less anger (M = 4.82, SD = .94) than
participants who experienced no delay (M = 5.25, SD = .96), B = -.22, SE = .10, p = .03.
A final set of analyses tested whether participants‟ anger mediated the
relationship between time delay and their accept-reject decisions. Following Preacher and
Hayes (2008), the analysis included three initial steps: (1) regressing delay on rejection
rates, (2) regressing delay on anger, and (3) regressing both delay and anger on rejection
rates (Lockwood & MacKinnon, 1998; Shrout & Bolger, 2002). The significant results
for Step 1 and 2 are noted above; Step 3 indicated that, controlling for anger, Wald =
13.38, B = 1.17, SE = .32, p < .001, the relationship between time delay and rejection
rates was no longer significant, Wald = 1.36, B = -.002, SE = .002, p = .24. To confirm
the significance of this mediation (Shrout & Bolger, 2002), we created bootstrap
confidence intervals by using 5,000 bootstrap samples. This yielded a 95% bias-corrected
confidence interval of (-.0041 to -.0002); because the interval does not include zero, it
indicates that anger mediated the effect of time delay on accept-reject decisions.
Thus, Experiment 2A supported our central hypothesis that a time delay would
reduce anger, which in turn would reduce costly punishments. To test both the reliability
and the generalizability of this effect, Experiment 2B investigated time delay‟s effects on
people (third-parties) who observed norm violations directed towards others (i.e., people
were not directly impacted by the norm violation). We also used shorter time delays, a
different measure of anger, and a different time delay procedure to test the robustness of
Time Delay, Retribution, and Emotional Regulation 14
our findings.
Experiment 2B
Method
Participants and design. Ninety-four undergraduates (61 females) from a U.S.
university participated for a payment of $5 plus the potential to earn additional money
during the experiment. Experiment 2B included three between-subjects conditions: no
delay, a short delay (30 seconds), and a longer delay (2.5 minutes).
Procedure. The procedures, presented via computer, described a 2-part monetary
allocation task. Although participants were told that they would be randomly assigned to
one of three possible roles (Player A, B, or C), they were all assigned the role of Player
C, a third-party who observed the other two participants‟ interaction.
In Part 1, Players A and B, who did not actually exist, ostensibly engaged in a
variation of the now-classic Trust Game (Berg, Dickhaut, & McCabe, 1995). They were
each endowed with 10 points, with each point worth $.10; Player A could transfer from 0
to 10 of their points to Player B, and any points transferred would be quadrupled en route
to Player B, who would then choose how much of the quadrupled total to return to Player
A. All of the players knew all of the rules, monetary information, and players‟ choices.
Player Cs were told that Player A had sent their entire endowment and that Player
B had chosen to keep the entire amount (40 points from Player A plus the 10 they started
with), returning nothing (zero points). The players‟ points were then noted publicly.
Player Cs were endowed with 25 points (also worth $.10 cents per point). In Part 2,
they could use these points to penalize the other players: each point allotted to punishment
reduced the punished player‟s outcome by two points. Thus, if Player C used 12 points to
Time Delay, Retribution, and Emotional Regulation 15
penalize Player B, Player C lost 12 points and Player B lost 24. Player Cs kept any points
that they did not use for punishments. The number of points used to punish Player B was
our behavioral dependent variable. Participants were informed that they might be randomly
chosen to keep their points and convert them to cash at the end of the experiment.
In manipulating time delay, we asked participants to make their punishment
decisions either immediately after Part 1, or after a short (30 seconds) or a longer (2.5
minutes) delay. During the delay, participants completed a dot estimation task
(Sivanathan, Molden, Galinsky, & Ku, 2008), which asked them to estimate the number
of bright dots that appeared for approximately five seconds on their computer screen;
they repeated this task until the time delay was complete. After making their punishment
decisions, the participants completed three items that measured their anger, disgust, and
scorn, e.g., “Indicate to what extent you feel this way at the present time, from 1 = „not at
all‟ to 7 = „extremely.‟” Their responses were averaged to form an anger index, α = .78.
Results and Discussion
As predicted, a longer time delay led to less punishing: the overall, three-way
ANOVA was significant, F(2, 91) = 3.39, p = .04. Planned comparisons indicated that no
time delay led to more punishment (M = 6.79, SD = 9.46) than the longer (2.5 minute)
delay (M = 2.27, SD = 3.42), t(91) = 2.50, p = .01, but the short time delay (30 seconds)
did not lead to a significant reduction in punishing (M = 5.83, SD = 7.12), t(91) = .53, p =
.60. In addition, the longer delay led to marginally less punishing than the short delay,
t(91) = 1.91, p = .06.
Also as expected, the three conditions had an impact on participants‟ reports of
their feelings of anger, F(2, 91) = 4.20, p = .02: no delay led to the most anger (M = 2.27,
Time Delay, Retribution, and Emotional Regulation 16
SD = .87), significantly more than the longer delay (M = 1.68, SD = .74), t(91) = 2.77, p
= .01, but not significantly more than the short delay (M = 2.16, SD = .95), t(91) = .55, p
= .58. In addition, the longer delay led to significantly less anger than the short delay,
t(91) = 2.15, p = .03.
As in Experiment 2A, anger mediated the impact of time delay on punishment.
Step 1 indicated that time delays led to less punishment, B = -.03, SE = .01, p = .05; Step
2 indicated that time delays and anger were negatively related: B = -.004, SE = .001, p =
.005; and Step 3 indicated that, controlling for anger, B = 2.62, SE = .84, p = .002, the
effect of time delays on punishment was only marginally significant, B = -.018, SE =
.010, p = .09. Bootstrap confidence intervals led to a 95% bias-corrected confidence
interval of (-.0225, -.0018), indicating that anger mediated the time delay  punishment
effect.
In sum, Experiments 2A and 2B showed that longer time delays (of 2.5 or 5
minutes rather than 30 seconds or responding immediately) led to less anger, which in
turn reduced costly punishment by people who had been treated unfairly and by third
parties who observed a stranger being treated unfairly. These data suggest that our
manipulations stimulated anger, which dissipated when participants did not make their
decisions quickly.
Although these results are illuminating, simple, and straightforward, they do not
reveal what people‟s thoughts were during the time delays. More specifically, we were
interested in the effects of people‟s thoughts during the delay on their punishment
behaviors. Thus, Experiments 3A and 3B manipulated time delays and directed people to
think about their punishment decisions in particular ways, i.e., a distraction versus a
Time Delay, Retribution, and Emotional Regulation 17
reappraisal versus a rumination condition. We predicted that time delays would reduce
punishments for people in the reappraisal and distraction conditions but that it might
increase punishments for people in the rumination condition.
Experiments 3A and 3B used the same short and long time delays as Experiment
2B. We expected that these thought processes would only lead to differential punishments
when people had enough time to think things through. Thus, we predicted that punishments
in the three conditions would differ only minimally following a 30-second delay and that
stronger differences would emerge following a 2.5-minute delay. Finally, rather than using
self-reported measures of anger that biased memories and post-hoc rationalizations can
influence, participants wrote about their reactions to their ultimatum offer (in Experiment
3A) and to the lack of reciprocity that they observed (in Experiment 3B) prior to their
punishment decisions. We coded these essays for expressions of anger.
Experiment 3A
Method
Participants and Design. One hundred nineteen (67 women) undergraduates from
a major university in Singapore received course credit for participating. They responded
to a $2 ultimatum offer, after either a 30 second or 2.5-minute delay. To manipulate
distraction, reappraisal, and rumination, we asked participants to describe an unrelated
event, their thoughts, or their feelings during the time delay. This created a 2 (time delay)
× 3 (thought manipulation) between-participants design.
Procedures. The procedures were similar to Experiment 1. However, rather than
seeing an on-screen message that the computer was processing information and that the
next screen would appear after a period of time, participants were asked to write about
Time Delay, Retribution, and Emotional Regulation 18
their reactions to their ultimatum offer. In the distraction condition, they were told,
“Before you make your decision, tell us about your most recent trip to the grocery store.
Please continue writing until the next page appears.” In the reappraisal condition, they
were told, “Before you make your decision, tell us what you think about ….” In the
rumination condition, participants were told, “Before you make your decision, tell us how
you feel about the offer you just received from the other player. Please continue
writing….” After either 30 seconds or 2.5 minutes, they were asked to accept or reject the
$2 ultimatum offer.1 As in Experiment 1, participants received $2 or nothing, based on
their decisions.
To check the effectiveness of the rumination and reappraisal manipulations, two
raters who were blind to the conditions independently rated whether participants‟ writing
focused more on thoughts or feelings: “How much does the statement seem to be
describing their thoughts or their feelings about this offer?” (1 = more about thoughts
than feelings to 7 = more about feelings than thoughts; α = .79). The two raters also
provided independent assessments of participants‟ anger by coding participants‟ writing
for its affective content: “How much negative emotion is being expressed in this
statement?” (1 = very little to 7 = quite a bit; α = .87; coding adapted from Pillutla &
Murnighan, 1996). We analyzed the averages of each of the two coders‟ ratings.2
Coding participants‟ writing in the 30-second conditions was not successful, as
more than half of the participants did not write enough to be ratable; on average,
participants wrote 9.8 words. Thus, although we were not able to analyze participants‟
emotions in these conditions, we were still able to analyze their punishment decisions.
Results and Discussion
Time Delay, Retribution, and Emotional Regulation 19
A logistic regression analysis of participants‟ punishment decisions led to a
significant time delay x thought process interaction, Wald = 8.01, p = .02. Distracted
participants in the 30-second delay conditions rejected almost twice as many offers
(proportionally) as distracted participants in the 2.5-minute delay condition (13 of 24;
54.2% versus 6 of 21; 28.6%); this difference was marginally significant, χ2 = 3.01, p =
.08. The different time delays did not affect cognitive reappraisers‟ decisions (30-second
delay: 8 of 20; 40% vs. 2.5-minute delay: 8 of 19; 42.1%), χ2 = .02, p = .90, but
ruminators rejected over twice as many offers (proportionally) in the 2.5-minute delay
condition (11 of 14; 78.6%) than they did in the 30-second delay condition (8 of 21;
38.1%): χ2 = 5.55, p = .02 (see Figure 1).
Also as expected, no significant differences emerged among the distraction,
reappraisal, and rumination conditions following the 30-second delay (all χ2‟s < 1.2).
Analysis of the 2.5-minute delay, however, indicated that rumination led to almost three
times as many ultimatum rejections as the distraction condition (78.6% vs. 28.6%) and
almost twice as many as the reappraisal condition (42.1%). The difference between
rumination and reappraisal was significant (χ2 = 4.39, p = .04), as was the difference between
rumination and distraction (χ2 = 8.41, p = .004), but the difference between reappraisal and
the distraction condition was not (χ2 = .80, p = .37). Coders‟ ratings confirmed that, following
the 2.5-minute delay, participants in the rumination condition (M = 4.22, SD = 1.50) wrote
about their feelings more than participants in the reappraisal condition did (M = 3.07, SD =
1.57), F(1, 31) = 5.71, p = .02. In addition, the emotions expressed in the rumination
condition were also significantly more negative than the emotions expressed in the
reappraisal condition (M = 4.11, SD = 1.71 vs. M = 2.66, SD = 1.71), F(1, 31) = 5.79, p = .02.
Time Delay, Retribution, and Emotional Regulation 20
A bootstrap mediation analysis indicated that negative emotions again mediated
the effects of participants‟ thoughts on their ultimatum rejections. Step 1 results
confirmed that rumination led to more rejections than reappraisals (Wald = 4.09, B =
1.62, SE = .80, p = .04). Step 2 indicated that negative emotions were associated with
rejection rates (Wald = 9.17, B = 1.01, SE = .33, p = .002); and Step 3 indicated that, after
controlling for negative emotions, Wald = 7.41, B = .93, SE = .34, p = .006, how people
thought about their offer and their rejection rates were no longer significantly related,
Wald = -.80, B = 1.00, SE = .64, p = .42. Finally, a 95% bias-corrected confidence
interval (.14, 4.10) indicated that the mediation was significant.
These data show that, following an anger-inducing event, the effects of a time
delay on punishing behavior depend on the nature of individuals‟ thoughts during the
delay. Rumination significantly increased punishing behavior. In contrast, distraction had
effects that were similar to the effects of a non-directed time delay, and a time delay had
minimal effect on reappraisal. In addition, the data continue to show that negative
emotions affect punishments: following a 2.5 minute delay, ruminators experienced more
negative emotions than reappraisers and subsequently rejected more ultimatum offers. To
continue our paired-experiments strategy to test the robustness of our effects, Experiment
3B tested these same predictions in the context of third-party punishments.
Experiment 3B
Method
Participants and design. One-hundred thirty-four (88 females) undergraduates
from a major university in Singapore received course credit for participating along with
the money they received during the experiment. As before, participants acted as third-
Time Delay, Retribution, and Emotional Regulation 21
party observers. The rest of the procedure and design were identical to Experiment 3A.
Procedure. Participants observed a Trust Game interaction and wrote about their
affective (i.e., rumination) or cognitive (i.e., reappraisal) reactions to their observations or
a recent trip to the grocery store (i.e. distraction) for 30 seconds or 2.5 minutes. Then they
decided how much to punish Player B. As before, their endowments were 25 points
(worth $.10 each) and each point used for punishment reduced the other participant‟s
payoff by 2 points. At the end of the experiment, each participant was paid $2.50 less
$.10 for each point they punished.
The two raters‟ codings of participants‟ writing for the manipulation check (α =
.82) and negative emotions (α = .86) continued to be reliable. Thus, we again analyzed
the average of the two coders‟ ratings. As in Experiment 3A, the data in the 30-second
essays could not be analyzed.
Results and Discussion
A significant time delay x thought process interaction emerged, F(2, 128) = 3.29,
p = .04. Consistent with Experiment 3A, distracted participants who responded after a 30second delay (M = 9.61, SD = 8.60) punished over twice as much as distracted
participants who responded after a 2.5-minute delay (M = 4.78, SD = 6.10): t(128) = 2.08,
p = .04. Unlike Experiment 3A, reappraisers who responded after a 30-second delay (M =
8.18, SD = 9.34) punished marginally more than reappraisers who responded after a 2.5minute delay (M = 4.28 SD = 4.9, t(128) = 1.07, p = .09. Finally, like Experiment 3A,
ruminators who responded after a 30-second delay (M = 7.72, SD = 8.12) punished less,
but not significantly less, than ruminators who responded after a 2.5-minute delay (M =
10.65, SD = 8.72, t(128) = 2.08, p = .21; see Figure 2).
Time Delay, Retribution, and Emotional Regulation 22
No differences emerged among distraction, reappraisal, and rumination following
the 30-second delay (all t‟s < 1). A 2.5-minute delay, however, led people who had
ruminated to punish more than twice as much as reappraisers (M = 10.65, SD = 8.72
versus M = 4.28, SD = 4.95) and almost twice as much as people in the distraction
condition (M = 4.78, SD = 6.10). Planned comparisons among these three conditions
indicated that rumination punishments were significantly greater than reappraisal, t(128)
= 2.97, p = .004, and distraction condition punishments, t(128) = 2.80, p = .006, and that
the latter two were not significantly different from each another, t(128) = .23, p = .82.
Coders‟ ratings confirmed that participants in the rumination condition (M = 4.58,
SD = 1.55) wrote about their feelings more often than participants in the reappraisal
condition did (M = 2.92, SD = 1.54), F(1, 49) = 14.63, p < .001.3 In addition, they
expressed significantly more negative emotions (rumination: M = 4.54, SD = 1.55 versus
reappraisal: M = 3.16, SD = 1.81), F(1, 49) = 8.58, p = .005.
A bootstrap mediation analysis again indicated that negative emotions mediated
the effect of rumination on punishments following the 2.5 minute delay. Step 1 was
confirmed above: rumination punishments were larger than reappraisal punishments. Step
2 was also confirmed, as negative emotions were associated with increased punishment
(B = 1.45, SE = .58, p = .02). After controlling for negative emotions, the effect of
rumination on punishment was less significant (B = 5.14, SE = 2.14, p = .02; dropping
from B = 2.92, SE = .95, p = .003 without negative emotions in the model), and a 95%
bias-corrected confidence interval (-3.42, -.07) indicated a significant mediation.
These data again show that the effects of a time delay on punishing behavior
depend on the nature of individuals‟ thoughts during the delay. As predicted, a 2.5-
Time Delay, Retribution, and Emotional Regulation 23
minute time delay led ruminators to punish non-reciprocators more than distracted
participants and reappraisers did, with negative emotions mediating the effect of thought
type (rumination versus reappraisal) on punishments; a short time delay had little effect.
In addition, a meta-analysis of Experiments 3A and 3B (Table 2) indicates that,
overall, people who engaged in a distraction task punished less after a delay, people who
engaged in rumination punished more, and people who engaged in reappraisal were
unaffected by a delay. Thus, although a time delay led to reduced punishments in our
initial experiments, these final two experiments suggest that this effect depends on the
nature of individuals‟ thoughts during the delay.
General Discussion
Anger can lead people to engage in costly retributive action. Across five studies,
using different manipulations of time delay, different measures of anger, and different
contexts, our results indicate that a time delay can help curtail the anger that fuels costly
punishment decisions. These positive benefits, however, were critically dependent on the
length of the delay and individuals‟ thought processes during the delay. Our initial
findings (Experiments 1, 2A and 2B) indicated that, following unfair, inappropriate
action, people punished less when their responses were delayed, because of a reduction in
negative emotions. When people ruminated during time delay, however, they not only did
not reduce their punishment behavior, they increased it. Thus, the effectiveness of a time
delay (Experiments 3A and 3B) depended on both on the length of delay and individuals‟
thought processes during the delay: short delays had essentially no effects but longer
delays led ruminators to punish more than reappraisers and distracted participants.
These results suggest that the age-old advice to take a break when angry may need
Time Delay, Retribution, and Emotional Regulation 24
to be reconsidered, as doing so without careful attention to how people think during the
delay may not always serve its prescribed purpose. In particular, the nature of an
individual‟s thoughts about a negative event seem to have potent effects: people who
ruminated for only 2.5 minutes punished more than people who reappraised or were
distracted, an effect that was consistently mediated by negative emotions.
Although ruminating after a negative event may allow people to understand their
negative emotions, it can come at an economic cost. Other work has shown that
rumination also leads to less systematic problem solving (Carver, Scheier, & Weintraub,
1989), decreased attention span and concentration (Brockner & Hulton, 1978), fewer
solutions to interpersonal problems (Nolen-Hoeksema, Morrow, & Fredrickson, 1993),
and even long-term adverse health outcomes (Dickerson & Kemeny, 2004; Thomsen, et
al., 2004). Given the sparse data available examining the long-term impact of rumination
on punishment behavior, one future research opportunity is to directly compare shortterm versus long-term repercussions of rumination on punishment behavior.
In contrast, the current data‟s upside suggests that reappraisal can allow people to
distance themselves from their anger and take a more „objective‟ view of their situations.
Kross and Ayduk (2008), for instance, found that taking a self-distant (akin to
reappraisal) versus self-immersed (akin to rumination) perspective led to quicker
recovery following a negative experience. Denson, Fabiansson, Creswell, and Pedersen
(2009) also demonstrated that taking a self-distant versus a self-immersed view decreased
cortisol levels. Our comparisons of rumination and reappraisal provided specific tests of
the consequences of different thought processes on subsequent interpersonal behavior in
economic exchanges. Our findings compliment prior research by showing that
Time Delay, Retribution, and Emotional Regulation 25
reappraisal, compared to rumination, may arouse less negative emotions and in turn less
costly punishment decisions. A fruitful avenue for future research might be to delineate
the impact of rumination and reappraisal on both punishing and rewarding behaviors. For
instance, third-party observers may not only have the option to punish non-cooperators,
they may also be able to compensate victims. Examining a full range of behaviors may
further elucidate the underlying psychological and physiological processes of rumination
and reappraisal.
We focused on anger as the central emotion that drives punishment behavior
because it is characterized by high other-control: people feel angry when perceiving
another person as responsible (Dunn and Schweitzer, 2005). Other emotions, e.g.,
anxiety, may also affect punishment decisions. Future research might examine how time
delays affect a full spectrum of emotions, both negative (i.e., anxiety, fear) and positive
(i.e., gratitude, happiness) and how they might differentially affect a variety of different
emotion-driven decisions.
One unexpected finding in the current research was the observation that reappraisal
led to only a small reduction in punishing behavior (M = .30; p = .14, in the metaanalysis). We expected that reappraisal would give people time to think about and reduce
the economic impact of a potential punishment decision. One reason why this did not
occur may be that the manipulation of reappraisal, which prompted people to „think‟
about their offer, was too general, leading people to engage in a host of different
cognitive analyses. Perhaps a more directed reappraisal prompt, such as one used by Ray
et al. (2008), directing participants to view an event from the perspective of an “impartial
observer” would have produced more powerful results. Thus, future research might test
Time Delay, Retribution, and Emotional Regulation 26
various manipulations of reappraisal to address this issue.
Rumination and Retribution: Potential Benefits
Although anger and the impulse to punish can be economically costly for
individuals, punishing normative transgressors is often collectively beneficial, as it can
discourage subsequent anti-normative behaviors (Fehr & Fischbacher, 2004a; Hoffman,
McCabe, & Smith, 1998). The mere threat of punishment, for example, can help maintain
cooperation and reduce competitive behavior (e.g., Fehr & Gachter, 2002). Recent
findings suggest that individuals frequently do engage in costly punishing behavior; as it
becomes more frequent, large groups may benefit (Boyd, Gintis, & Bowles, 2010). This
suggests that the social regulatory effects of enforcement behavior may improve
collective fitness. Thus, we do not suggest that the expression of anger is uniformly nonadaptive – it may be critical, for instance, for preserving collective benefits and, in so
doing, individual punishers may actually experience a net benefit. Moreover, research has
shown that displays of anger in social interactions can result in individual monetary gains
(e.g., Andrade and Ho, 2009), suggesting that at times, punishment can serve as an
individually adaptive response, even without collective benefits.
Rumination is not always an individual affliction; instead, it can also serve a
beneficial purpose – encouraging moral emotions such as anger (Haidt, 2003; Rozin,
Lowery, Imada & Haidt, 1999) that can result in socially-adaptive punishment behavior.
Our findings provide a nuanced, psychological understanding of when these punishments
are likely to emerge, particularly when rumination and time delay are combined.
Conclusion
The ebb and flow of human interactions can be emotionally charged and often
Time Delay, Retribution, and Emotional Regulation 27
lead to actions that actors or observers might see as interpersonally inappropriate or
unfair. These perceptions naturally lead to emotional reactions and occasionally to
retaliation. Across a set of five experiments, in varying economic exchanges, we have
attempted to highlight both the benefits and the unintended, negative consequences of
time delays and thought processes on individuals‟ choices to engage in costly punishing
behavior. Thomas Jefferson‟s sage advice to count – to combat emotionally-charged
decision-making – seems to have considerable, general validity. At the same time, the
current research suggests that it is also important to understand what people are actively
thinking during a time delay.
Time Delay, Retribution, and Emotional Regulation 28
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Table 1. Punishment Behaviors Across Experiments 1-2B
Experiment
Context
1
Ultimatum
Rejection ($2)
2A
Ultimatum
Rejection ($1)
2B
Third-party
punishment
Time Delay
Immediate
5 minutes (no instructions)
5 minutes (distraction: count)
Immediate
5 minutes (no instructions)
Immediate
30 seconds (distraction: dots)
2.5 minutes (distraction: dots)
Punishment
48%
17%
13%
77%
58%
6.79 points
5.83 points
2.27 points
Time Delay, Retribution, and Emotional Regulation 39
Table 2. Summary of Meta-Analysis
Hypothesis
Distraction: punish less following
a long (vs. short) delay
Ruminators: punish more
following a long (vs. short) delay
Reappraisers: do not punish more
following a long (vs. short) delay
N
Effect Size
Estimates (r)
3A
3B
Summary
M
Z
p
CI95%
.54
.67
.61
2.98
.003
.21, 1.00
-.87
-.35
-.60 -2.88
.004
-1.01, -.19
.05
.54
.30
.14
-.10, .70
119
134
1.46
Note. M represents the weighted average of the effect sizes. Heterogeneity tests were not
significant.
Time Delay, Retribution, and Emotional Regulation 40
Figure 1. The effect of thought type and time delay on the percentage of ultimatum offers
that were rejected, Experiment 3A
Time Delay, Retribution, and Emotional Regulation 41
Figure 2. The effect of thought type and time delay on third-party punishments,
Experiment 3B
Time Delay, Retribution, and Emotional Regulation 42
1
As a response to reviewers‟ comments, we collected additional 30-second conditions in
Experiments 3A and 3B separately from the original 2.5-minute conditions. The
participants in the 30-second and 2.5-minute conditions came from the same university
subject pool, and did not differ in age, ethnicity, and gender.
2
In Experiments 3A and 3B, the content of the writings in distraction condition was
qualitatively different from the content of the writings in the rumination and reappraisal
conditions and was unrelated to the punishment task. As a result, we did not code these
participants‟ writings in the distraction conditions for affective versus cognitive content.
3
Four participants received a rating < 1.5 in the rumination condition and one received a
rating of > 6.5 in the reappraisal condition (1.5 standard deviations away from the mean),
suggesting that they did not follow the instructions. As a result, they were dropped from
the analyses, leaving a total of 51 participants in the rumination and reappraisal
conditions.