Third-party Evaluation Of The Social Status Of Reciprocal Roles: The Role Of Prosocial Behavioral Costs And Trait Gratitude

Reciprocity is an important part of interpersonal communication,and people tend to give good evaluations to those who engage in reciprocal behavior.Evaluating reciprocal roles from a third-party perspective is conducive to a more comprehensive exploration of the factors that influence third-party evaluations of the social status of reciprocal roles,encouraging people to reciprocate and promoting interpersonal communication and cooperation.Flynn and Yu in 2021 first evaluated reciprocal roles from the perspective of a third party and found that third parties gave significantly lower social status ratings to the reciprocator in reciprocal roles than to the initiator.However,Flynn and Yu’s study only considered reciprocal behavior under conditions of equal pro-social behavior costs,ignoring situations in which the reciprocator "reciprocates".Third-party evaluator traits may also be a factor in the evaluation of the social status of reciprocal roles.Therefore,this study will examine the effects of the cost of pro-social behavior and third-party trait gratitude on the social status evaluation of reciprocal roles separately.To address the above questions,three experiments were designed for this study.Experiment 1 used an experimental study to replicate the study of third-party evaluation of reciprocal roles’ social status to verify the stability of the findings.Experiment 2builds on Experiment 1 to examine the role played by the cost of pro-social behavior of reciprocal roles in third-party evaluations of reciprocal roles’ social status.Experiment3 explores the differences on the social status evaluation of reciprocal roles from the perspective of third-party individual trait gratitude.Experiment 1 selected 130 college students to explore differences in third-party social status evaluations of reciprocal roles.The results showed that there were significant differences in third-party social status evaluations of reciprocal roles,with third parties giving significantly lower social status evaluations to the reciprocator than to the initiator.Experiment 2 explored whether the cost of pro-social behavior plays a role in thirdparty social status evaluations of reciprocal roles,using a 2(reciprocal role: initiator VS.payback)× 2(cost of pro-social behavior: greater than VS.equal to)mixed experimental design with 167 college students selected for the experiment.The results showed that when the cost of pro-social behavior of the returner was equal to the cost of pro-social behavior of the initiator,the social status evaluation given to the returner was significantly lower than the social status evaluation given to the initiator;when the cost of pro-social behavior of the returner was greater than the cost of pro-social behavior of the initiator,the social status evaluation given to the returner was significantly higher than the social status evaluation given to the initiator.Experiment 3 explored whether third-party trait gratitude plays a role in the social status evaluation of reciprocal roles.A 2(reciprocal role: initiator vs.reciprocator)× 2(trait gratitude: high vs.low)mixed experimental design was used,and 78 subjects were selected for the experiment.The results showed that high trait gratitude subjects gave significantly higher social status evaluations to the returner than to the initiator;low trait gratitude subjects gave no significant difference in social status evaluations to the returner and the initiator.In summary,third-party social status evaluations of reciprocating characters are influenced by the pro-social behavior costs paid by the reciprocating characters themselves and the role of trait gratitude of the third-party evaluators.The findings suggest that people give higher social status ratings to the reciprocator when the reciprocator pays higher pro-social behavior costs;on the other hand,third parties with high trait gratitude also give higher social status ratings to the reciprocator.This study enriches the research on reciprocal roles and social status from a third-party perspective,and also provides guidance for enhancing the social status of rewarders.