People use sanctioning behaviours di fferently according to what they believe and want to achieve, according to the context and to the situation. We need to under- stand the motivations for diff erent forms of punishment in order to explain why sanctions and incentives have diff erent eff ects on human behaviour. Aim of this work is to propose a cognitive model of three distinct kinds of punishing behaviours, diff erentiated in terms of the de fining cognitive patterns.