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Reward and Punishment Allocation in the Indian Culture

Lilavati Krishnan is Professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. Her current areas of interest are distributive justice, cultural and cross-cultural psychology and Indian concepts related to social behaviour. lk{at}iitk.ac.in

Premlata Varma

Premlata Varma is Reader in Psychology, Bapu Post-Graduate College, Peppeganj, Gorakhpur. She has carried out research on attribution and personality development, and is presently inquiring into social-psychological aspects of violence and aggression. She holds a doctoral degree from the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur.

Vijyendra Pandey

Vijyendra Pandey is a Research Scholar in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, and is working on some major determinants of distributive fairness in the Indian society.

Two scenario studies examined justice perceptions in Indian samples. Study 1 investigated the effect of allocator-recipient relationship and internal/external locus of merit and need on both reward and punishment allocation in a distributive context, involving a meritorious and a needy recipient. Between merit, need and equality, subjects showed a clear equality orientation, in both allocation rule preference and perceived fairness of a given allocation. This finding was inconsistent with the strong need orientation reported in several Indian studies. In order to obtain more information on punishment alone, Study 2 was conducted in order to investigate a non-distributive context, involving internal/external locus of merit and need, and choice of punishment and perceived fairness of a given set of punishments, seriousness of the offence, guilt of the offender and the importance of need and merit. In both studies, the effect of situational variables did not emerge as expected. The apparent absence of effects of the situational variables was interpreted as the expression of a cognitive strategy to combine all the contextual information. The equality orientation found in Study 1 was interpreted as the resultant of such a combination. One part of this combination was in terms of the merit and need rules. It was suggested that subjects thought in terms of merit and need, instead of merit or need. Some evidence for this suggestion was obtained in Study 2. Need and merit were rated as being similar in importance when deciding a fair punishment. Attention was drawn to several aspects of justice perception, especially those related to punishment that requires further detailed investigation with modified methods.

Psychology & Developing Societies, Vol. 21, No. 1, 79-131 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/097133360902100105


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