Causing unjustified harm violates an implicit social contract, warranting punishment.

Evidence

Yet this fact does not negate the core intuition that individuals who cause unjustified harm have violated an implicit social contract to respect the basic interests of others (Baumard, Andre, & Sperber, 2013; Sousa & Piazza, 2014), or the retributive logic that harmful agents are deserving of punishment (Ashworth, 2010; Baumard, 2011; Carlsmith, Darley, & Robinson, 2002; Darley & Pittman, 2003). — Mansur Khamitov, Jeff D. Rotman, and Jared Piazza, Perceiving the Agency of Harmful Agents, 31