The Effect Of Sadness Empathy On Third-party Intervention Under Different Fairness And Gain-loss Context

Third-party intervention is an important prosocial behavior that plays an important and positive role in fair maintenance and group cooperation.Third-party maintenance of fair behavior includes both punishment and compensation.There are many studies on "Empathy-Altruism Hypothesis".State empathy is a special emotional response that is more closely related to prosocial behavior.This study induced state empathy through laboratory operations,and examined emotional responses such as subjective reports of sadness,emotional assessment,RSA responsiveness,and other physiological characteristics.Based on the third-party punishment /compensation paradigm of Dictator Game task,this paper examines the effect of sadness state empathy on third-party punishment/compensation under different allocation plans and gain-loss context.In study 1,single-factor between-subjects design was adopted.In this study,89 students were randomly divided into sad emotion group and neutral emotion group.Questionnaire method was used to measure the subjective emotional experience levels and state empathy levels during baseline and the emotion priming phase.The RSA levels in the baseline and the emotional initiation phase were recorded by a physiological multi-channel device.The results of the study show that sad video material can effectively induce the state empathy of the subjects.Specifically,compared with the neutral emotion group,there is less positive emotion experience but more negative emotion experience and higher RSA reactivity in the sad emotion group.The subjective report of the sad emotion group has a higher empathy score.In study 2,128 college students were selected as subjects,and three-factor mixed design of2(sadness state empathy induction: induction group,control group)× 2(gain-loss context: gain,loss)× 6(fairness level: 50/50,60/40,70/30,80/20,90/10,100/0)was adopted to investigate the effect of sadness state empathy on the degree of fairness and the third-party intervention in the gain-loss context.Among them,the induction of state empathy is an inter-group variable,the gain/loss context and the allocation plan are intra-group variables.The dependent variables are decision rates(punishment rate,compensation rate,retention rate)and decision strength(punishment amount,compensation amount)of the third party behavior.The results of the study show that,(1)Compared with the control group,the induction group had higher compensation rate,larger compensation amount but lower retention rate.(2)As the degree of unfairness increased,the punishment rate increased,the retention rate decreased,and the amount of punishment and compensation amount increased.(3)Third-party intervention is not affected by the gain-loss context.Conclusion:(1)Sadness video can induce sadness state empathy.The characteristics of state empathy in sadness emotion are characterized by less positive emotional experience,more negative emotional experience,higher state empathy response emotionally and higher RSA reactivity physiologically.(2)Sadness state empathy affects third-party intervention,that is,individuals choose more punishment,less retainment,and larger compensation amount.(3)Unfairness of the allocation plan affects third-party intervention.As the degree of unfairness increases,the subjects also choose more punishment,less retainment,and the amounts of punishment and compensation increase.(4)Third-party intervention is not affected by the gain-loss context.