Four studies (total N = 1586) test the notion that people are motivated to punish moral rule violators because punishment offers a way to obtain structure and order in the world. First, in a correlational study, increased need for structure was associated with the stronger endorsement punishment for moral rule violators. This relationship between need for structure and punishment was not driven by political conservatism. Three experimental studies then tested, and corroborated, our main causal hypotheses: that threats to structure increase punitive judgments for moral rule violators (i.e., a compensatory mechanism; Study 2) and that a lack of punishment for wrongdoing (relative to punishment for wrongdoing) makes the world seem less structured in the moment (Studies 3 and 4). We compare and contrast our structure-based account of moral punishment to other theories and findings across the punishment literature.

四项研究（总计N = 1586）检验这样一种观念，即人们有动机惩罚违反道德规则的人，因为惩罚提供了一种获得世界结构和秩序的方法。首先，在一项相关研究中，对结构的需求增加与对道德规则违反者的更严厉的认可惩罚有关。结构需求与惩罚之间的这种关系并不是由政治保守主义驱动的。然后三项实验研究测试并证实了我们的主要因果假设：对结构的威胁增加了对道德规则违反者的惩罚性判断（即补偿机制；研究2），并且缺乏对不当行为的惩罚（相对于对不当行为的惩罚）让世界在当下显得不那么结构化（研究 3 和 4）。