Laws govern society, regulating people's behavior to create social harmony. Yet recent research indicates that when laws are broken by people we know and love, we consistently fail to report their crimes. Here we identify an expectancy-based cognitive mechanism that underlies this phenomenon and illustrate how it interacts with people's motivations to predict their intentions to report crimes. Using a combination of self-report and brain (ERP) measures, we demonstrate that although witnessing any crime violates people's expectations, expectancy violations are stronger when close (vs. distant) others commit crimes. We further employ an experimental-causal-chain design to show that people resolve their expectancy violations in diametrically opposed ways depending on their relationship to the transgressor. When close others commit crimes, people focus more on the individual (vs. the crime), which leads them to protect the transgressor. However, the reverse is true for distant others, which leads them to punish the transgressor. These findings highlight the sensitivity of early attentional processes to information about close relationships. They further demonstrate how these processes interact with motivation to shape moral decisions. Together, they help explain why people stubbornly protect close others, even in the face of severe crimes.

法律规范社会，规范人们的行为以创造社会和谐。然而，最近的研究表明，当法律被我们认识和挚爱的人违反时，我们始终无法举报他们的罪行。在这里，我们确定了基于预期的认知机制，该机制是这一现象的基础，并说明了该机制如何与人们预测举报意图的动机相互作用。通过结合使用自我报告和大脑（ERP）措施，我们证明，尽管目击任何犯罪都违反了人们的期望，但是当亲密（相对于远方）犯罪时，期望违规会更强。我们进一步采用了实验-因果链设计，以证明人们解决了完全相反的期望违规问题方式取决于他们与犯罪者的关系。当亲密的人犯罪时，人们会更多地关注个人（相对于犯罪），这会导致他们保护犯罪者。但是，相反的情况对于遥远的其他人而言却是正确的，这导致他们惩罚违法者。这些发现强调了早期注意过程对有关亲密关系信息的敏感性。他们进一步证明了这些过程如何与塑造道德决定的动机相互作用。它们共同帮助解释了为什么即使面对严重犯罪，人们仍然顽固地保护亲密的他人。