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Observers are often dissatisfied with punishments handed down by judges for low-level crimes. This dissatisfaction emerges from a perceived trade-off between deterrence and severity. On the one hand, observers believe that harsher punishments are effective at deterring future criminal activity, but also balk at excessively harsh punishments because of their undue harm on transgressors. On the other hand, observers critique less harsh—and even proportionate—punishments for their inability to deter future crime. This trade-off, we argue, can be resolved when judges look beyond traditional punishments (e.g., jail time) and instead consider an increasingly popular alternative: creative punishments—those that use case-specific factors to craft experiential sanctions for transgressors. We argue that creative punishments are increasing in popularity because they are perceived to achieve deterrence through experiential learning rather than a cost–benefit analysis stemming from harshness. In turn, we argue and demonstrate that transgressors themselves also prefer creative (vs. traditional) punishments. Thirteen studies test our model (nine in the article; four in the appendix), spanning yoked, experimental, causal-chain, and scenario designs, as well as an archival analysis—using artificial intelligence—of over 17,000 social media engagements with creative punishments. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)
