Moralistic punishment is common in humans and functions to discourage perceived moral transgressions. Research in neuroeconomics suggests that moralistic punishment behavior is associated with activity in neural systems involved in detecting norm violations and in value-based decision-making. Separately, research in philosophy and social psychology highlights different moral expectations for girls/women and boys/men. Here, we synthesize these perspectives to propose a framework for investigating gender disparities in punishment. We propose such disparities may arise through multiple channels, including (1) differences in how the neural salience network responds to perceived norm violations, with stronger responses when women (versus men) violate feminine-coded norms, and when men (versus women) violate masculine-coded norms; and (2) differences in how the neural valuation network tracks the value of punishment decisions, with stronger responses when punishing gender-specific norm violations. We review literature on gendered moral expectations and neural mechanisms underlying moralistic punishment, and suggest hypotheses for future research.

道德惩罚在人类中很普遍，其功能是阻止人们感觉到的道德过犯。神经经济学的研究表明，道德惩罚行为与检测规范违规和基于价值的决策所涉及的神经系统活动有关。另外，哲学和社会心理学方面的研究强调了对女孩/妇女和男孩/男人的不同道德期望。在这里，我们综合了这些观点，为调查惩罚中的性别差异提出了一个框架。我们认为，这种差异可能通过多种渠道出现，其中包括（1）神经显着网络对感知到的规范违反的反应方式有所不同，当女性（相对于男性）违反女性编码规范时以及男性（相对于女性）违反时，神经显性网络的反应会更强。男性规范；（2）神经评估网络如何追踪惩罚决策的价值方面的差异，在惩罚针对性别的规范违规行为时反应更强。我们回顾了关于性别道德期望和道德惩罚背后的神经机制的文献，并提出了未来研究的假设。