The Influence Of Intention And Outcome On The Third-Party Intervention

Fairness criterion is the core social norm that people abide by and maintain together,and it is very important for the survival and development of individual and society.Previous studies on economic games have shown that when individuals,as third parties(bystanders),witnessed the unfair allocation by allocator,they were usually willing to sacrifice their own interests to punish the allocator or compensate the recipient who suffer unfair,so as to maintain fairness.However,previous studies usually focused on allocator's intentional unfair allocation,that is,the allocator's intention was consistent with the actual outcome of the allocation.The allocator's intention refers to the desire and initiative of the individual who distributes money to take action in order to get a certain outcome of allocation.The outcome of the allocation refers to the final distribution of money.In the case of allocator's intentional unfair allocation,both the intention and the outcome of the allocation were unfair.This consistency leads to confusion effects of intention and outcome on thirdparty intervention,and it is difficult to clarify the role of the two factors.In addition,previous researchers have found that third-party decisions were influenced by the allocator's control over the outcome and the recipient's belief about the allocator's intention.Then,do these two factors affect the effect of intention and outcome on third-party intervention,and if so,what is the influence? In view of the above problems,this study attempted to explore the effects of intention and outcome on third-party intervention,its influencing factors and psychological mechanism systematically through the separation of intention and outcome in experiments.In this study,we adapted the dictator game paradigm and used 4 studies(8experiments)to explore the above problems.In the dictator game paradigm,the allocator and the recipient jointly owned a sum of money,and the allocator allocated it between them,while the recipient could only accept it passively.As a third party,the participant needed to decide how much to take out of his or her own money to reduce the allocator's amount(punishment)or increase the recipient's amount(compensation)after seeing the allocation.In study 1,the allocation proposed by the allocator could be changed by the computer randomly.In this way,the allocator had no control over the actual outcome of the allocation.At this point,the allocation proposed by the allocator represented its intention(fair allocation / unfair allocation),and the final allocation changed or not changed by the computer represented the outcome(fair allocation / unfair allocation).In this setting,two experiments were conducted in study 1 to explore the effects of intention and outcome on the third-party punishment(experiment 1)and compensation(experiment 2).For punishment amount,the results revealed a significant interaction effect between intention and outcome.Specifically,the unfair intention of the allocator increased the amount of third-party punishment significantly compared with fair intention.This intention effect was more significant under the unfair outcome.This interaction effect between intention and outcome on the third-party punishment amount was mediated by the third-party's compassion towards the recipient.However,there was only the significant main effect of the outcome on third-party compensation amount,and the third-party would give more money to the recipient under the unfair outcome.This outcome effect on the compensation amount could be mediated by the third-party's anger towards the allocator and compassion towards the recipient separately.In study 2,the experiment setup was changed.We designed that the allocator had partial control over the actual outcome of allocation through the dice game.In the dice game,the allocator needed to choose one of five dice to roll: four unfair dice,one fair die,and the result of rolling the die represented the final allocation.An unfair die had a 5/6 chance of getting an unfair allocation,and a 1/6 chance of getting a fair allocation when rolled.A fair die had a 5/6 chance of getting a fair allocation,and a1/6 chance of getting an unfair allocation when rolled.At this point,the die chosen by the allocator represented its intention(fair allocation / unfair allocation),and the result after rolling represented the outcome(fair allocation / unfair allocation).Study 2 used this setting to investigate the effects of intention and outcome on third-party punishment(experiment 3)and compensation(experiment 3 and 4).The results showed that,consistent with the experiment 1 where the allocator had no control over the outcome,there was a significant interaction effect between intention and outcome on third-party punishment amount,and the third-party's compassion towards the recipient could mediate the interaction effect on the punishment amount.However,the result of the third-party compensation was changed compared with the experiment2.When the allocator had partial control over outcome,there was not only the main effect of the outcome,but also the main effect of the intention.Compared with the fair intention,the third-party would compensate the recipient more under the unfair intention.But there was no significant interaction effect between intention and outcome at this time.Furthermore,the effect of intention and outcome on compensation amount could be mediated by the third-party's anger towards the allocator or compassion towards the recipient.In summary,the above two studies focused on the allocator,revealing that the allocator's control over the outcome had an influence on the effect of the intention and outcome on the third-party compensation,but had no effect on punishment.On the basis of study 2,study 3 focused on the recipient attempted to further explore whether the recipient's belief about the allocator's intention could moderate the effect of intention and outcome on third-party punishment(experiment 5)and compensation(experiment 6)under the situation in which the allocator had partial control over the outcome.The recipient's belief about the allocator's intention refers to the recipient's ability to integrate the information they have obtained and make a mental representation of the allocator's intention,which reflects the recipient's view and approval of the allocator's intention.Based on the dice game in study 2,study 3further manipulated the recipient's belief about the allocator's intention(fair allocation / unfair allocation)by informing the third-party that the recipient thought the allocator had chosen a fair or unfair die.The results showed that the interaction effect between intention and outcome on third-party punishment amount was significant regardless of the recipient's belief.However,the interaction effect among intention,outcome and recipient's belief was significant for third-party compensation amount: there was no significant interaction effect between intention and outcome when the recipient's belief was fair;the interaction effect was significant when the recipient's belief was unfair.This interaction effect was embodied in the following aspects: when the outcome was fair,the intention effect was not significant;when the outcome was unfair,the compensation amount under the fair intention was significantly lower than the unfair intention.The reason for this significant difference was that when the recipient's belief and the actual outcome were both unfair,the intention affected the third-party's trust in the recipient,which in turn affected the compassion towards the recipient,and affected the compensation amount ultimately.This study revealed that the recipient's belief played a moderating role in the effect of intention and outcome on compensation,but had no effect on punishment.In the first three studies,the third-party had no way to choose the intervention type and had to make decisions under the prescribed type.In study 4,the participant's decision-making pattern was slightly modified based on the dice game in Study 2,and the third-party was given the right of choice(chose one of the three types:punishment,compensation,non-intervention)to explore whether the third party's preference of the intervention type would be different under different intention and outcome(experiment 7).Furthermore,the functional Near-infrared spectroscopy technique(f NIRS)was used to record brain activities in the prefrontal cortex(PFC)and right temporoparietal junction(rTPJ)of third-party during the task,to further examine the neural basis underlying the intervention preference(experiment 8).The results showed that the compensation ratio of the third-party was significantly higher than the punishment ratio under the fair intention-unfair outcome condition(accidental unfairness).At this time,the third-party's compensation ratio was significantly positively correlated with the activation of the rTPJ.The stronger the activation,the higher the compensation ratio.However,the punishment ratio of the third-party was significantly higher than the compensation ratio under the unfair intention-fair outcome condition(want to be unfair but failed).At this time,there was a significant negative correlation between the activation of the rTPJ and the punishment ratio.The weaker the activation,the higher the punishment ratio.To sum up,through four studies,this study showed that the third-party punishment always depended on the tradeoff between the intention and outcome.This effect was stable,which did not change due to the variation of the allocator's control over the outcome and the recipient's belief.On the other hand,the compensation was sensitive to the change of the condition.When the allocator had no control over the outcome,the compensation only depended on the fairness of the outcome.When the allocator had partial control over the outcome,the outcome and intention affect the third-party compensation respectively,and this effect could be moderated by the recipient's belief.When the recipient's belief was unfair,the compensation was affected by an interaction between both factors.Furthermore,the third-party showed different preferences in different situations.There was a preference for compensation over punishment in accidental unfairness situation,and a preference for punishment over compensation in attempted unfairness situation,which was related to the activation of the third-party's rTPJ.These findings not only deepen our understanding of the behavior rule of third-party intervention under unfair allocation at the theoretical level,but also provide some inspiration and reference for the maintenance of fair norms at the application level.