Academic Publications
Published
Sarin, A. & Cushman, F.A. (2024). One thought too few: An adaptive rationale for punishing negligence. Psychological Review, 131(3), 812-824.
Sarin, A. & Cushman, F.A. (2023). Exploring teaching with evaluative feedback. In Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (Vol. 45, No. 4).
Sarin, A. The cognitive contours of punishment.
Sarin, A., Ho, M. K., Martin, J.W., & Cushman, F.A. (2021). Punishment is Organized around Principles of Communicative Inference. Cognition, 208.
Cushman, F. A., Sarin, A., & Ho, M. K. (2019). Punishment as communication. Oxford Handbook of Moral Psychology.
Sarin, A., Lagnado, D., & Burgess (2017). The Intention – Outcome Asymmetry Effect: How incongruent intentions and outcomes influence judgments of responsibility and causality. Experimental Psychology.
Under Review
Sarin, A. & Cushman, F.A. (2024). Punishment in negligence is multifactorial: influenced by outcome, lack of due care, and the mere failure of thought.
In Prep
Lim, Y. & Sarin, A. (in prep). Transparency and trust: Public perceptions of punisher legitimacy shape sentencing evaluations.
This research explores how the transparency of decision-making processes influences public perceptions of punishment. The key question it addresses is how perceptions of punisher legitimacy—whether the authority is seen as fair and trustworthy—affect how people evaluate the appropriateness of sentencing decisions. It investigates the psychological mechanisms that connect transparency in authority with trust in the justice system and adherence to social norms.
Sun, R. & Sarin, A. (in prep). Benefitting from punishment impacts the moral reputation of the punisher.
This work examines the moral consequences of self-interest in punishment. The central question is how punishers’ moral reputation is shaped when they personally benefit from the punishments they impose. The research investigates how observers perceive punishers differently when they believe the punishment is motivated by self-gain versus a genuine interest in upholding fairness and justice, focusing on the impact this has on moral authority.
Sarin, A. & Cushman, F. (in prep). Teachers utilize rewards and punishments in intuitive pedagogy to shape learner beliefs.
This works examines the cognitive underpinnings of intuitive pedagogy and looks at how teachers use rewards and punishments to guide learners’ belief formation. The key question it explores is how educators intuitively structure feedback to optimize learning outcomes and shape behavior. It combines behavioral experiments with computational models to understand the cognitive strategies that teachers employ to reinforce norms and encourage desirable behaviors in students.
Sarin, A. & Rai T. (in prep). Profiting from punishment distorts inferences and undermines cooperation: Evidence from behavioral experiments.
This work investigates how the mere perception of profiting from punishment (even in the absence of actual gain) damages social cooperation and makes punishment less effective. The study asks how the act of gaining from punishment affects people’s inferences about fairness and the legitimacy of the punisher. It explores the broader implications of these distortions for social cohesion and collective action, using behavioral experiments to highlight the negative effects of profit motives in punitive contexts.