Are there differences between voters and elected elites in thier view on how severely moral transgressions should be punished? To answer this quesion we admistered four survey experiments to a representative sample of elected elites (n= 1232) and to a representative sample of voters (n=2354). The expeirments vary whether a moral transgression was guided by narrow self-interested or by negligence as well as the gender of moral agent. We hypothesize that personality measured by the big five inventory (60 items battery) is an important moderator of how severly trangressions should be punished. Individuals scoring high on concientiousness are expected to be wiling to punish moral transgressions harder irrespective of the underlying motivation for the transgression. Individuals scoring high on openness are expected to punish transgression motivated by narrow self-intertest harder than transgressions due to negligence. We also expect elected elites to punish moral transgression less hard than the general public. Finally, we expect that women are punished more severely than men by elites as well as by the genreal public.

Surprisingly, we do not find support for the hypotheses related to personality. Interestingly, we find that there are not significant differences between how hard elites and the public punish moral transgression. Elites as well as the general public find that moral transgression motivated by self-interest should be punished much harder than transgression due to negligence. Consequently our paper adds to the litterarue on representation by suggesting that difference between elected elites and the general public are mininal.