Fairness Maintaining Behaviors In The Gain And Loss Context:Third-party Punishment And Third-party Compensation

Fairness is an important prerequisite for harmonious development of society.The maintenance of fairness could be executed by the second-party or third-party in the interpersonal interaction.The second-party is a person directly affected by unfairness,while the third-party is a bystander of unfairness whose interests are not directly affected by unfairness.Unlike second-party fairness maintaining behaviors,which is susceptible to individual and context factors as suggested by many research,third-party fairness maintaining behaviors are more stable,and also represent a common phenomenon in real life.The fairness maintaining behaviors by third-party are generally considered as altruistic behaviors,and it can be realized through third-party punishment or third-party compensation.The punishment is sanction imposed on the unfair perpetrators,and the compensation is assistance and support given to unfair victims.In previous research,these two kinds of altruistic behaviors were usually explored by economic games.However,economic games can occur either in the gain context or loss context.Previous studies have found that second-party fairness maintaining behaviors were different in the gain and loss context.However,whether or not fairness maintaining behaviors by third-party are affected by the gain and loss context is unknown.In addition,combining gain and loss context with third-party maintaining fairness behaviors may also be helpful in solving some theoretical problems related to fairness.Specifically,the fairness maintaining behaviors by secondparty cannot exclude the involvement of individual interests,therefore,it is difficult to distinguish whether any effect produced by the gain or loss context is due to the change of individual interests.The current research explored the altruistic behaviors of thirdparty,and excluded the interference of personal interests,expecting to investigate the influence of gain and loss context on the motivation of maintaining fairness.The research mainly used the Dictator game based third-party punishment and compensation task,and adopted a series experiments to explore the specific influence of the gain and loss context on the fairness maintaining behaviors by third-party,as well as the mental mechanism of fairness maintaining behaviors.Study 1 investigated the third-party punishment and compensation in the gain and loss context based on multiple choice task.We provided three behaviors options which include punishment,compensation,and keep,and asked participants to choose one of the behaviors or multiple behaviors,to investigate how the third-party react to an unfair distribution when there were no restrictions.Experiment 1 and Experiment 2 set the scene of sharing economic gain and bearing economic loss,respectively,to investigate whether the third-party behaviors were different in the gain and loss context when they were faced with unfair distributions.The result showed that in the gain and loss context,third-party tended to take action against unfair incidents,and most of them chose the combination mode of punishment and compensation.Compared with the gain context,third-party were more likely to choose compensation in the loss context.Study 2 investigated the third-party punishment and compensation in the gain and loss context based on one choice task.We provided three options which include punishment,compensation,and keep,and only asked participants to choose one of the behaviors.The purpose of study 2 was to investigate what kind of altruistic behaviors was most favored by third-party in the gain and loss context,and to further distinguish the specific influence of the gain and loss context on third-party punishment and compensation,exploring the reasons for these influences.Specifically,Experiment 3 provided participants with two options for punishment and keep,Experiment 4 provided participants with two options for compensation and keep,to examine how the third-party punishment and third-party compensation per se were influenced by the gain and loss context.Experiment 5 asked participants to make one-out-three choices among the three options of punishment,compensation,and keep,further exploring the specific impact of the gain and loss context on third-party punishment and compensation.Experiment 6 manipulated the time limit(time pressure)for participants' response to unfair incidents,to explore third-party intuitive response to unfair incidents in the gain and loss context.Experiment 7 manipulated participants' Other-Regarding Focus about proposers and recipients in unfair incidents in the gain and loss context,seeking for a further explanation of the reasons for the gain and loss context affecting third-party punishment and compensation.Study 2 highlighted the findings that the gain and loss context affected third-party punishment and compensation.Relative to loss context,third-party were more inclined to punish unfair proposers in the gain context.And relative to gain context,third-party were more inclined to compensate unfair victims in the loss context.Punishment was an intuitive response for third-party to unfair incidents and it had a cross-contextual stability.Moreover,the difference in Other-Regarding Focus could explain the effect of the gain and loss context on third-party fairness maintaining behaviors.In the gain context,the Other-Regarding Focus of third-party was on the proposers,resulting in increased punishment;in the loss context,the OtherRegarding Focus was on the recipient,resulting in increased compensation.Further analysis found that third-party anger played a partial mediation between the gain and loss context or Other-Regarding Focus and the rate of third-party punishment;thirdparty sympathy played a partial mediation between the gain and loss context or OtherRegarding Focus and the rate of third-party compensation.Study 3 explored the influence of third-party social status and the gain and loss context on third-party punishment and compensation.In real life,third-party fairness maintainers such as judges,police,etc,have relatively high social status.In the standard experimental task of third-party maintaining fairness(third-party punishment and compensation task),participants may also have a heightened sense of social status or power.Study 3 explored whether the third-party fairness maintaining behaviors and the pattern of contextual effected on these behaviors remain stable when the social status of third-party had been directly manipulated.And it also explored whether third-party social status could modulate the impact of the gain and loss context on third-party punishment and compensation.Experiment 8 selected the groups with relatively high and low social status in real life,and used questionnaires to explore the actions that third-party in different social status took in unfair incidents and the specific impact of the gain and loss context on their fairness maintaining behaviors.Experiments 9 and 10 were two laboratory studies which manipulated the two important aspects of social status: power and economic capital,in order to explore how third-party social status and the gain and loss context influenced the specific performance of third-party in altruistic behaviors of maintaining fairness,and to distinguish the key factor explaining influences of social status on third-party fairness maintaining behaviors.The results showed that the gain and loss context influenced the third-party punishment and compensation steadily.In addition,third-party social status had modulated their behavior response to unfair incidents: the higher social status perceived by third party,the more punishment they choose.Further,this effect occurred mainly through the increase in third-party perception of power.The tendency of third-party punishment was related to their high-power status rather than their high economic capital.The impact of contexts and social status on third-party punishment and compensation were independent of each other,which further confirmed that the influence of the gain and loss context on the altruistic behaviors of third-party maintained fairness were stable.In addition,similar to the results of Study 2,third-party anger played a partial mediation in the gain and loss context and the rate of third-party punishment,third-party sympathy played a partial mediation between the gain and loss context and the rate of third-party compensation.In summary,the research explored the punishment and compensation behaviors of third-party fairness maintaining in the gain and loss context.The results showed that the gain and loss context affected third-party punishment and compensation.Consistent with the previous study about second-party fairness maintaining behaviors,the research also found that third-party fairness maintaining behaviors increased in the loss context.The research contributed to a more accurate and more objective understanding of the impact of context on fairness and fair-maintaining behaviors,excluding the interference caused by the involvement of the second party's personal interests.By distinguishing third-party punishment and compensation,the research connected the gain and loss context with specific third-party fairness maintaining behaviors(gain context was linked to third-party punishment,and loss context was linked to third-party compensation).Further,the research revealed that third-party punishment was an intuitive response when people took action against unfair incidents,moreover,the gain and loss context affected third-party fairness maintaining behaviors through changing the Other-Regarding Focus.Finally,with a series of manipulations and experiments on social status,the research not only found the connection between high social status and third-party punishment,but also further demonstrated that the gain and loss context was a stable influencing factor of third-party punishment and compensation.In general,the research accomplishes the first investigation into the impact of the gain and loss context on third-party fairness maintaining behaviors,and offered a new perspective to discuss fairness maintaining behaviors and their motivation in depth.The research expanded the study of economic fairness in the fields of psychology and behavioral economics,providing new ideas for third-party research on altruistic behaviors,and affording reference for exploration of social fairness issues in the future.