Intergroup Bias Influences Third-Party Punishment and Compensation: In-group Relationships Attenuate Altruistic Punishment

2018 ◽  
Vol 46 (8) ◽  
pp. 1397-1408 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yingjie Liu ◽  
Xiaohua Bian ◽  
Yu Hu ◽  
Ya-Ting Chen ◽  
Xuzhou Li ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Dictator Game ◽  
Third Parties ◽  
Intergroup Bias ◽  
Third Party ◽  
Altruistic Punishment ◽  
Intergroup Relationships ◽  
Trait Empathy ◽  
Group Members ◽  
Group Relationships ◽  
Shed Light

Intergroup relationships can impact on a third party's willingness to punish a violator, but few researchers have explored how intergroup relationships affect third-party compensation tendencies. We recruited 163 participants to observe a dictator game, and then choose either to punish the dictator or compensate the recipient, each of whom could be from the participant's in-group or out-group. Third parties often chose not to punish in-group dictators and to compensate both in-group victims and out-group victims. When out-group members transgressed against the in-group, participants punished these out-group members just as often as they compensated the in-group recipients, although they punished out-group dictators more harshly than others overall. However, when both proposer and recipient came from the out-group, participants often did not intervene. We also found that third-party punishment and compensation were related to individual differences in participants' trait empathy and Machiavellianism. Our findings shed light on the modulating effect of intergroup relationships on third-party altruistic decisions.

Third-party fairness maintenance in five types of group relationships

2021 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Zhuang Li ◽  
Gengdan Hu ◽  
Lei Xu ◽  
Yang Rui
Keyword(s):  
Dictator Game ◽  
Intergroup Bias ◽  
The Other ◽  
Third Party ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Third Party ◽  
Group Relationships ◽  
Group Member

To find out if third-party fairness maintenance is affected by group relationships, we divided participants into three groups and had them play a game of third-party fairness maintenance, in which a third party chooses between keeping (not intervening), punishing, or compensating, when the other players face unfair dictator game results. Results show that when faced with in-group unfair events, the third party tended to choose keeping or compensating strategies, and to opt not to intervene in the unfair events of the out-group. This tendency was stronger when both the dictator and the recipient belonged to the same out-group. In addition, there was intergroup bias in maintenance of third-party fairness. When the violator was an in-group member, the third party tended to use keep and compensate strategies, and chose to punish when facing violation by the out-group. Our findings illustrate the influence of group relationships on third-party fairness maintenance.

Children’s Group Biases In Third-Party Punishment Are Guided By Norms-Focused Behaviors

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Luz Gonzalez-Gadea ◽  
Antonella Dominguez ◽  
Agustin Petroni
Keyword(s):  
Developmental Trajectories ◽  
Third Party ◽  
Controlled Processes ◽  
Group Members ◽  
Shed Light

Children tend to punish norm transgressions, even when they are mere external observers—a phenomenon known as third-party punishment. This behavior is influenced by group biases, as children unevenly punish in-group and out-group members.Two opposing hypotheses have been proposed to explain group biases during third-party punishment: the Norms-Focused Hypothesis predicts that individuals punish more harshly selfishness by in-group than by out-group members; contrarily, the Mere Preferences Hypothesis predicts that people are more lenient to selfishness by in-group than by out-group members. Here, we tested these hypotheses in children between six and 11 years of age (N=124) and explored the mechanisms underlying group biases during the development of third-party punishment. Our results supported the Norms-Focused Hypothesis: children preferentially punished unfair sharing from in-group members evidencing in-group policing bias, and they were also more willing to punish selfishness directed at in-group members than out-group members, showing in-group favoritism bias. We observed different developmental trajectories and mechanisms associated with these biases: while in-group policing remained stable over childhood as automatic as well as more effortful and controlled processes, in-group favoritism increases with age and was manifested only in the context of more controlled processes. These results shed light on the mechanisms underlying the development of third-party decisions and could be used to plan strategies and interventions to manipulate group biases in children.

Experimental evidence that acorn woodpeckers recognize relationships among third parties no longer living together

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (5) ◽  
pp. 1257-1265 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael A Pardo ◽  
Eric L Walters ◽  
Walter D Koenig
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Evidence ◽  
Social Group ◽  
Third Parties ◽  
Social Species ◽  
Living Together ◽  
Melanerpes Formicivorus ◽  
Group Members ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Acorn Woodpeckers ◽  
Group Relationships

Abstract Triadic awareness, or knowledge of the relationships between others, is essential to navigating many complex social interactions. While some animals maintain relationships with former group members post-dispersal, recognizing cross-group relationships between others may be more cognitively challenging than simply recognizing relationships between members of a single group because there is typically much less opportunity to observe interactions between individuals that do not live together. We presented acorn woodpeckers (Melanerpes formicivorus), a highly social species, with playback stimuli consisting of a simulated chorus between two different individuals, a behavior that only occurs naturally between social affiliates. Subjects were expected to respond less rapidly if they perceived the callers as having an affiliative relationship. Females responded more rapidly to a pair of callers that never co-occurred in the same social group, and responded less rapidly to callers that were members of the same social group at the time of the experiment and to callers that last lived in the same group before the subject had hatched. This suggests that female acorn woodpeckers can infer the existence of relationships between conspecifics that live in separate groups by observing them interact after the conspecifics in question no longer live in the same group as each other. This study provides experimental evidence that nonhuman animals may recognize relationships between third parties that no longer live together and emphasizes the potential importance of social knowledge about distant social affiliates.

Nationalism and Social Sanctioning Across Ethnic Lines: Experimental Evidence from the Kenya–Tanzania Border

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sangick Jeon ◽  
Tim Johnson ◽  
Amanda Lea Robinson
Keyword(s):  
Income Inequality ◽  
Experimental Evidence ◽  
Ethnic Diversity ◽  
Dictator Game ◽  
Past Research ◽  
Ethnic Composition ◽  
Third Party ◽  
Inequality Aversion ◽  
Norm Violations ◽  
Group Members

AbstractPast research shows that ethnic diversity reduces the ability to sanction norm violators, ultimately undermining cooperation. We test this directly by experimentally varying the ethnic composition of groups playing a dictator game with third-party punishment among two ethnic groups along the Kenya–Tanzania border. We also implement a structurally identical game where the endowment division is randomly determined in order to isolate a punishment motivation from the motivation to rectify income inequality. While costly income adjustment in both games is driven primarily by norm violations and inequality aversion, the ethnic composition of groups also influences sharing and sanctioning behavior in Kenya but not Tanzania, consistent with documented differences in the strength of nationalism across the two countries. However, the way in which shared ethnicity affects sanctioning in Kenya—namely, increased punishment of out-group violations against in-group members—is at odds with theories that anticipate that costly sanctioning will primarily target coethnics.

What you did to others you did to me? Brain activation during altruistic punishment in a first person versus a third party dictator game

NeuroImage ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 47 ◽  
pp. S95 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Kirsch ◽  
J. Zimmermann ◽  
A. Schmitz ◽  
S. Lis ◽  
B. Gallhofer ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Brain Activation ◽  
Dictator Game ◽  
Third Party ◽  
First Person ◽  
Altruistic Punishment

Third-Party Releases in Insolvency of Multinational Enterprise Groups

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-140
Author(s):  
Ilya Kokorin
Keyword(s):  
Business Models ◽  
Multinational Enterprise ◽  
Third Parties ◽  
Third Party ◽  
Insolvency Law ◽  
Legal Responses ◽  
Group Members ◽  
Legitimate Expectations ◽  
Enterprise Groups ◽  
The Eu

Abstract Europe is experiencing the rise of restructuring proceedings, which has recently culminated in the adoption of the Restructuring Directive. While being a major achievement in harmonising substantive (pre)insolvency law in the EU, it lacks rules targeting restructuring of multinational enterprise groups. As a result, effectiveness of group reorganisations may be undermined. Nevertheless, some jurisdictions adopt innovative tools, facilitating group solutions. Among them – third-party releases. Such releases entail a total or partial discharge or amendment of claims against third parties, such as co-obligors, guarantors and collateral providers (typically, group members) in the insolvency or restructuring proceeding of the principal debtor.The diversity of approaches to third-party releases highlights their controversial nature. Such releases may frustrate legitimate expectations of creditors relying on cross-guarantees and other forms of cross-liability arrangements. Extending the effects of debt reorganisation to third parties in the absence of a separate insolvency proceeding may also run contrary to the longstanding views on corporate insolvency and entity shielding. This article argues that a single-entity-restructuring risks being short-sighted and that third-party releases are a matter of commercial necessity, synchronising legal responses with actual business models and better addressing the complexity of group interdependencies, realised through various intra-group liability arrangements.

scholarly journals Compassion meditators show less anger, less punishment, and more compensation of victims in response to fairness violations

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cade McCall ◽  
Nikolaus Steinbeis ◽  
Matthieu Ricard ◽  
Tania Singer
Keyword(s):  
Social Preferences ◽  
Dictator Game ◽  
Third Party ◽  
Mental Training ◽  
Prosocial Motivation ◽  
Altruistic Punishment ◽  
Unfair Treatment ◽  
Fairness Judgments ◽  
Training Exercises

Fairness violations elicit powerful behavioral and affective responses. Indeed, people are willing to incur costs to sanction unfair behavior. Here we study the possible impact of long-term mental training in socio-affective capacities such as compassion on altruistic punishment and compensatory behavior in economic games. To this end we recruited a group of long-term meditation practitioners (LTPs) who had engaged in an average of 40 K h of mental training exercises including compassion-related meditation, along with a group of meditation-naïve controls. Participants played several adaptations of the dictator game in which they had the opportunity to punish the dictator both when they were the recipients of the dictator’s offer and when they were third-party witnesses to the dictator’s treatment of an anonymous second player. Compared to controls, LTPs were less likely to punish when they were the victims of fairness violations. However, both groups punished equivalently when they witnessed others receiving unfair treatment. In post-task questionnaires, controls reported significantly more anger in response to unfair offers than LTPs, although fairness judgments did not differ between groups. These data suggest that because the LTPs were less angered by unfair treatment of themselves, they punished that behavior less. However, when they witnessed the unfair treatment of others, they engaged in norm-reinforcing punishment. Finally, when participants played an additional game which included the opportunity to recompense victims, LTPs were more likely to do so. Together these data point to differential approaches to justice whereby LTPs engaged less in vengeful, retributive justice and focused more on norm reinforcement and the restoration of equity. These differences suggest that social preferences are plastic and that altruistic responses to unfairness may be shaped by the prolonged cultivation of prosocial motivation, altruism, and compassion.

scholarly journals Third-Party Punishment or Compensation? It Depends on the Reputational Benefits

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhuang Li ◽  
Gengdan Hu ◽  
Lei Xu ◽  
Qiangqiang Li
Keyword(s):  
Dictator Game ◽  
Third Parties ◽  
Third Party ◽  
The Third ◽  
Different Response

Third-party fairness maintenance could win some reputational benefits, and it includes two methods: punishment and compensation. We predicted that the third parties' preference between punishment and compensation are affected by whether they are free to choose between the two methods, and the affection could be interpreted through reputational benefits. The present study includes two sections. In Study 1, the participants acted as fourth parties who were asked to rate the reputations of the third parties who had chosen different response methods to an unfair result of the dictator game. The results showed that (1) there was no reputational difference between the two methods when third parties were not free to choose, (2) but the reputation of compensation was better when third parties were free to choose. In Study 2, the participants acted as third parties. The participants were asked to choose a method to respond to an unfair result of the dictator game. There were two reputational contexts: secret and open. The results showed that (1) when third parties were not free to choose, they had no preference between the two methods under the two reputational contexts, (2) but when third parties were free to choose freely, they prefer punishment under the secret context but prefer compensation under the open context. This study systematically reveals a reputational interaction between fourth and third parties, and verifies the affection of reputational benefits on the third parties' preference between punishment and compensation.

scholarly journals The ‘spiteful’ origins of human cooperation

2010 ◽  
Vol 278 (1715) ◽  
pp. 2159-2164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank W. Marlowe ◽  
J. Colette Berbesque ◽  
Clark Barrett ◽  
Alexander Bolyanatz ◽  
Michael Gurven ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Economics ◽  
Ultimatum Game ◽  
Dictator Game ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Third Party ◽  
Complex Societies ◽  
Basic Emotion ◽  
Altruistic Punishment ◽  
Collective Action Problems ◽  
Third Person

We analyse generosity, second-party (‘spiteful’) punishment (2PP), and third-party (‘altruistic’) punishment (3PP) in a cross-cultural experimental economics project. We show that smaller societies are less generous in the Dictator Game but no less prone to 2PP in the Ultimatum Game. We might assume people everywhere would be more willing to punish someone who hurt them directly (2PP) than someone who hurt an anonymous third person (3PP). While this is true of small societies, people in large societies are actually more likely to engage in 3PP than 2PP. Strong reciprocity, including generous offers and 3PP, exists mostly in large, complex societies that face numerous challenging collective action problems. We argue that ‘spiteful’ 2PP, motivated by the basic emotion of anger, is more universal than 3PP and sufficient to explain the origins of human cooperation.

scholarly journals The unresponsive avenger: More evidence that disinterested third parties do not punish altruistically

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric J. Pedersen ◽  
William H.B. McAuliffe ◽  
Michael E. McCullough
Keyword(s):  
Third Parties ◽  
Experimental Designs ◽  
Third Party ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Norm Violations ◽  
The Third ◽  
On Demand ◽  
Altruistic Punishment ◽  
Robust Evidence ◽  
Experimental Demand

Many social scientists believe humans possess an evolved motivation to punish violations of norms—including norm violations that do not harm them directly. However, most empirical evidence for so-called altruistic punishment comes from experimental economics games that create experimental demand for third-party punishment, raising the possibility that the third-party punishment uncovered in these experiments has been motivated by a desire to appear concerned about social norms rather than by actual concern about upholding them. Here we present the results of five experiments in which we used an aggression paradigm to contrast second-party and third-party punishment with minimal experimental demand. We also summarize the results of these experiments meta-analytically. We found robust evidence that subjects who were insulted by a stranger experienced anger and punished the insulter. To a lesser degree, subjects who witnessed a friend receive an insult also became angry and punished the insulter. In contrast, we found robust evidence that subjects who witnessed a stranger receive an insult did not punish the insulter, although they did experience modest amounts of anger. In only one experiment did we find any punishment on behalf of a stranger, and this result could plausibly be explained by the desire to escape the moral censure of other bystanders. Our results suggest that experimental designs that rely on demand-laden methods to test hypotheses about third-party punishment may have overstated the case for the existence of this trait.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document