Punishment’s Purifying Effect in the Workplace

While many won’t go through the mental moral gymnastics and anguish of Rodion Raskolnikov, Dostoyevsky’s protagonist in Crime and Punishment, for their wrongs in the workplace, punishments help employees’ feel better about their employers and themselves, emotionally purifying them. Often though, we’re too focused on extracting retribution or Pavlovian behavioral change, or simply too ignorant or disbelieving to reap these benefits for employers and employees.

Even though we’ve known atonement’s benefits for almost two millennia, Brock Bastian’s (The University of Queensland) work is a rare scientific examination (Cleansing the soul by hurting the flesh: The guilt reducing effect of pain) (“The Masochism Tango” [The Economist, February 5, 2011]). In the workplace, application is deceivingly very simple and effective. Once employees acknowledge that they’ve wronged and feel badly, we do two things:

1. Avoid judgment
2. Ask, “What do you want to do about it?”

What’s deceiving is that it’s extremely easy to fall into the traditional approach of retribution and behavioral change. This certainly happens when we don’t feel the punishment is enough or don’t feel we’ve ensured change by issuing threats such as, “If this happens again . . .” At this juncture saying something like, “I also want you to know that I don’t see this wrong reflecting upon you as a person.” Disappointing us then becomes a deterrent while subtly hinting they can’t expect this from everyone. People will strive to preserve the good we see in them.

Therefore, punishment’s purification works when people punish themselves, we don’t judge them, and we don’t treat them as behavioral projects. We might not satisfy our base retributive instincts, but we avoid planting resentment’s seeds and return pleased, productive employees to work who have created their own motivation to change.

Additional readings and research citing this work by Brock Bastian and his colleagues Jolanda Jetten and Fabio Fasoli.