Feud-Limiting Norms

In this post I want to suggest an explanation for two sets of related puzzles.

The first puzzle is why protestors go out of their way to do illegal things, and especially things that force police to remove and detain them using direct physical contact. Sure, it makes sense for protestors to take costly actions to show how much they care about their cause. And it makes sense for them to defy particular laws when they want others to consider cancelling those laws. But why go beyond that to break laws to which they don’t object, and to induce direct physical force to be used on them in enforcing those laws? 

The second puzzle is why law tends to excuse and cut punishments for “crimes of passion”, not planned beforehand, and also when the guilty party apologizes and acts contrite afterward. Note that we don’t do this for small legal violations, like a speeding or parking ticket. You won’t get out of these by showing that you did them at the last minute without planning them beforehand, or by showing afterward how sorry you are and now see the error of your ways and will never ever do it again. But we let such factors influence the punishment for violent crimes like murder.

My explanation is that humans have long developed a set of social norms designed to limit feuds. In a feud, opposing coalitions repeatedly hurt each other, typically physically, each time in retaliation for prior hurts in the series. Feuds can be very damaging, and hard to stop once they get going. So we pay more attention to events plausibly related to feudes, and we have special social norms, attitudes, and habits designed to prevent them from starting, and to end them once they do start.

And as we see a revolution as related to an extreme feud, we apply similar attitudes and habits when some large coalition seems to threaten to cause a full breakdown of the social order, in order to forcibly replace existing rules and authorities with a whole new set. 

One such habit is to draw a clear line at direct physical harm. We’ll tend to let it slide if two sides merely dislike each other, insult each other, refuse to socialize or do business with each other, or fail to tell each other helpful info. But once one side physically touches the other, to hurt them or force them to do things, we see that as crossing a clear bright line. That’s when observers plan to step in, make it stop, and blame whomever crossed that line.

Another such habit is treating violations that seem more likely to perpetuate a feud more severely than those that seem more likely to end them. So as feuds are continued by intentional reprisals, we treat intentional harms more severely than accidental harms. And as someone who seems sincerely sorry for their crime seems less likely to continue a feud by committing more of those crimes, we treat that less severely. But we only apply these adjustments to harms that could plausibly be part of a feud. Parking and speeding tickets are not plausibly such harms, so they don’t get such adjustments. 

To gain attention for their cause, many protestors try to frame their actions as being possibly the start of a revolution. Large coordinated co-located mobs defying laws, and physical violence happening to them, tend to cause such framing. We then see police causing physical violence to them as crossing that bright feud line, and sympathize more with the protestors who didn’t cross that line. Even though they violated the law on purpose. 

And that’s my theory. 

Added 12May: Many people express their political and policy opinions and intentions through a great many peaceful means. Often they take costly actions, to show the strength of their feelings. And some express their objection to particular laws by breaking them in innocent ways, to argue for changing those laws.

But why do “protesters” express their political opinions by imposing costs on others, especially via breaking laws unrelated to the policies to which they object? I see two obvious messages sent here. First, they are hinting at their willingness to “revolt”, i.e., to impose even larger costs and break even more laws in the service of their cause.

And second, to the extent that authorities make unusual exceptions for them, such as not enforcing laws against them, or granting them unusual abilities to impose costs on others, they show the power they have over authorities. Which suggests that those authorities are taking the other message about possible revolt seriously.