Experimental Study On The Effect Of Gratitude On Third Party Punishment In Junior High School Students

The fairness norm is one of the important conditions for maintaining social justice and promoting the harmonious development of society.Third-party punishment occurs when an individual,as a bystander(third party),pays a cost to punish those who violate social norms.Emotional factors are often seen as the precursors of behavior,which can stimulate,maintain and regulate individual behavior.Gratitude,as a moral emotion,is a positive emotion that people experienced after receiving grace.According to the moral affection theory,gratitude has a moral motivation value,which prompts people to produce altruistic behaviors.So people may do more third-party punishment when they feel grateful.But when the victim(recipient)who has helped him(direct reciprocity)or is a stranger(indirect reciprocity),Whether there will be some differences in the third-party punishment among middle school students needs to be explored through empirical research.This study based on moral affect theory and reciprocity theory,which explored the effects of emotions,gender,and the identity of the receiver on third-party punishment in junior high school students through two experiments,and gave suggestions about gratitude education and altruistic behavior cultivation of junior high school students based on the experimental results.This study was carried out from two experiments.In experiment one,we selected 102 students in the grades two of junior high school,and used 3(emotional state: gratitude,happy,neutral)× 2(gender: male and female)two-factor between-subjects design to investigate the effects of emotion and gender on third-party punishment.In experiment two,we selected 122 junior students,and used 2(helping object: stranger,helper)× 2(gender: male and female)two-factor between-subjects design to investigate the effects of helpers' identity and gender on third-party punishment.We drawn some conclusions as following:(1)When facing the distribution of dictator,the second grade students in junior high school were more likely to make third-party punishment.(2)The rate of third-party punishment in the second grade students in junior high school with gratitude enmotion,was significantly higher than that with neutral emotion.The intensityof third-party punishment in junior high school students was significantly stronger than happy and neutral emotion.(3)Gender played a moderating role in the relation between emotion and third-party punishment.(4)When the recipient was designed as a helper who helped participants before,the rate and intensity of third-party punishment of the second grade students in junior high school was significantly higher than that of strangers.(5)Gender played a moderating role in the relation between the identity of helpers and third-party punishment.