The Influence Of Third-party Punishment On The Victims’ Subsequent Social Norm Compliance

Fairness is a social norm universally observed in human society.Despite the fact that most people have a tendency to act fairly,they inevitably engage in behaviors that violate the fairness norm out of self-interest.Such violations of the fairness norm can cause the victim to conduct more unfair behaviors in future social interactions with others,which is detrimental to social order.However,when the fairness norm is violated,third parties will punish the violator even if they incur a personal cost.Third-party Punishment(TPP)has been shown to effectively reduce the unfairness of subsequent distribution by the first-party violator and the fourth-party observer,and also has an impact on the emotional valence and fairness perception of both the violator and observer.However,it is currently unknown whether the victim(second-party),who suffered a loss in the previous interaction,will also be positively influenced by third-party punishment.Based on the modified TP-DG paradigm,this study attempts to answer the following questions through four experiments:(1)Can TPP affect the subsequent distribution behavior of the second-party who suffered a loss in the previous fair interaction? If such the effect exists,is it related to changes in the second-party’s fairness perception and emotional valence?(2)How do the intention and outcome of TPP affect the subsequent distribution behavior of the second-party?(3)Can the impact of TPP be transferred from a fair distribution situation to a cooperation situation?Experiment 1 provided a preliminary exploration for the first question above.Participants first acted as the recipients in the dictator game and then observed whether thirdparty punished the unfair allocator,while subjectively rating their emotional valence and fairness perception.And then,participants acted as the allocators to interact with uninvolved others.Experiments 2 and 3 focused on the second question.Experiment 2 introduced different third-party agents(human/computer)to investigate whether the intention of TPP would affect the second-party’s subsequent fair distribution behavior.Experiment 3 further separated the intention and outcome of TPP to explore the separate role of intention and outcome.Experiment 4 explored the third question by replacing the subsequent dictator game with the prisoner’s dilemma,and observing whether the subsequent cooperative behavior of the second-party would be influenced by TPP.The results of Experiment 1 showed that,compared to third-party that do nothing,thirdparty punishment significantly increased the amount of money the second-party allocated to the fourth-party.At the same time,TPP also induced the second-party to perceive more fairness and experience more positive emotions.Further analysis indicated that the effect of TPP on the second-party’s subsequent allocation amount followed a chain of mediation through the path of "third-party punishment → fairness perception → emotional valence →subsequent fair distribution behavior." Experiment 2 further found that the intention of TPP had a positive impact on the second-party’s subsequent behavior.When the TPP was done by a human,the second-party allocated more money in subsequent interactions.Additionally,Experiment 2 only found the chain of mediation when the third-party was a human and did not find significant mediation effects when the third-party was a computer program.Experiment 3 completely separated the intention and outcome of TPP and found that both the intention and outcome positively promoted the degree of fairness of the distribution behavior by the second-party.The second-party’s perception of fairness mediated the effect of the intention of TPP on the second-party’s subsequent behavior,while emotional valence mediated the effects of both the intention and outcome of TPP on the second-party’s subsequent behavior.Further examination showed that when the intention and outcome were consistent,the effect of TPP was greater.Last but not the least,Experiment 4 found that the positive effect of TPP on the second-party’s subsequent behavior in the fair distribution situation could be transferred to the cooperation situation.Punishing the first-party violator could improve the second-party’s cooperative level in subsequent interactions,and the effect did not weaken with the situation change.In summary,this study systematically explored the effect of third-party punishment on the second-party who suffered losses in previous fair interactions.The results robustly demonstrated the positive effect of TPP on the second-party’s subsequent adherence to fairness norms,and found that this effect was not only related to the changes in economic distribution caused by TPP,but also to the intention of punisher.Additionally,this study provided a preliminary exploration of the underlying indirect path through which third-party punishment influenced the second-party’s subsequent behavior and the transfer effects across social situations.The above results provide the first evidence that third-party punishment can also affect second-party victims,which positively supplements previous research and indicates that third-party punishment has a broader extrapolation effect.It also provides feasible ideas for how to better increase victims’ well-being and promote the maintenance and dissemination of fairness norms.