The Regulatory Focus Influence Altruistic Punishment In The Injustice Situation

Altruistic punishment is the third-party punishment, Altruistic punishment isdefined as when third party witnessed someone hurt other people’s interests, thirdparty punish the person who hurt others even to do so loss of self-interest. In socialjustice research field has always been focused on third-party reaction to injustice,Study found that a third party will take measures to punish the perpetrators.Researchers explored and discussed the reasons that affect the behavior of altruisticpunishment, such as emotional factors, the level of moral development, Instrumentalmotivation, relational motivation, the intention of the perpetrators and the situationalfactors. But previous studies have rarely pay attention on role of self-regulation onaltruistic punishment. This study based on regulatory focus theory and altruisticpunishment proposed hypotheses: the regulatory focus whether will influencealtruistic punishment in the distributive injustice situational.Experiment one that explored implicit association between regulatory focus anddefending justice. The results showed: promotion words and justice words as well asprevention words and injustice words are more inclined to join each other, theserepresent the implicit attitudes of restorative justice: Promoting justice and preventinginjustice.Experiment two depicted a cartoon mouse trapped inside the maze and instructedparticipants to “find the way for the mouse” to induced regulatory focus, exploredbehavior of altruistic punishment in the context of distributive justice and injustice bythe modified version of dictator game. The results showed:(1) in the context ofdistributive justice, Third party does not appear altruistic punishment behavior;(2) inthe context of distributive injustice, participants with a promotion focus andprevention focus both have behavior of altruistic punishment, but participants with apromotion focus are more inclined to altruistic punishment, and the higher degree of altruistic punishment.On the basis of experiment two，experiment three explored the high or lowindividual-self accessibility and regulatory focus condition influence altruisticpunishment in the distributive injustice situational by inducing individual-selfaccessibility and regulatory focus with Communication Style Questionnaire. Theresults showed:(1) no matter whether inducing regulatory focus, participants withhigh or low individual-self accessibility are more inclined to altruistic punishment;(2)when individual-self accessibility was high, participants with a prevention focusprevention-focus participants responded more altruistic punishment to distributiveinjustice than their promotion-focus counterparts.Conclusions as follows:1. Promotion words and justice words as well as prevention words and injusticewords are more inclined to join each other, these represent the implicit attitudes ofrestorative justice: Promoting justice and preventing injustice.2.In the context of distributive injustice，participants with a promotion focus aremore inclined to altruistic punishment than their prevention-focus counterparts, andthe higher degree of altruistic punishment.3. No matter whether inducing regulatory focus, participants with high or lowindividual-self accessibility are more inclined to altruistic punishment;whenindividual-self accessibility was high, participants with a prevention focusprevention-focus participants responded more altruistic punishment to distributiveinjustice than their promotion-focus counterparts.