Social Norm Activation:the Psychological Mechanism Of Third-party Punishment And Its Influence On Cooperation

Only with society can human beings survive, likewise only with this socialized character can human society exist. This article provide a composite view of both emotional and social ways on typical altruistic behavior such as Third-party punishment(TTP) which is paid more and more attention by economists, sociologists, neurobiologists and psychologists.3studies included6experiments draw a detailed picture of TTP step-by-step. This study not only construct a psychological model of TTP, but also point out both positive and negative influence of TTP on cooperation.Study1figures out the main facts which cause TTP by3different experiments. Experiment1uses the Dictator Game with a third-party subject to explore the emotional facts in TTP.45university students present in this experiment. They are asked to choose one of the given two actions:punishing the unfair distribution or compensating the unwilling reception. For most subjects choose to punish the unfair distribution, the emotion of anger may take a more important place during the TTP process. Experiment2focuses on the difference between the third-party and the second party punishment. Both Third-party Game and Ultimatum Game are used in this experiment.120university students present in both virtual and real games. The result shows that the extent of emotional excitation significantly influences the second party punishment, but there is no such relationship between the third-party punishment and the emotional excitation. The result implies that second and third party punishment may share different psychological processes, and the anger in TTP may not concern with the loss of the responder. Experiment3continues to explore the main facts which cause TTP by comparing the effect of social norm and personal need.132university students present in this experiment. The result shows that compared with personal need, social norm plays a more important place on TTP.Based on the social norm activation theory, Study2deeply analyses the process of TTP by introducing a variable of social responsibility. To construct a psychological model of PPT, experiment4uses Structural equation modeling (SEM) to explore the relationship of TTP, anger, social responsibility and cooperation. This model suggests that people’s social norm will be activated when seeing the norm violation. Further more, the higher social responsibility one person have, the easier his/her social norm will be activated. Norm activation causes anger and therefore causes TTP. People whose social norm is activated will perform more pro-socially in the next game. TTP affects not only the third-party subject itself, but also the other members in the group. Study3uses2experiments to explore the influence of TTP on cooperation. Experiment5analyses the different effect on cooperation of two different social norms:descriptive norm and injunctive norm.120university students present in experiment5. The result shows that comparing with injunctive norm, descriptive norm has a more significant influence on TTP, and there is a significant interaction between the two norms. Experiment6pays more attention on the influence on cooperation of different frequency of TTP. Collecting the data of a sample of300university students, the result implies that a low frequency of TTP will successfully increase the level of cooperation, even if the punishment sanction is removed. And Experiment6also finds that higher frequency of TTP will reduce the internal motivation on cooperation. An explaination of this effect is given that TTP will not only remind subjects the injunctive norm, but also implies an exsitance of the norm violation. So the perception of the norm violation increases with the frequency of TTP which implies that most people in the group may not obey the social norm. The cooperation in group goes down as well as the perception of the descriptive norm.