Selfish third parties act as peacemakers by transforming conflicts and promoting cooperation

Disrupting the Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex Attenuates the Difference in Decision-Making for Altruistic Punishment Between the Gain and Loss Contexts

Altruistic punishment is a primary response to social norms violations; its neural mechanism has also attracted extensive research attention. In the present studies, we applied a low-frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) to the bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) while participants engaged in a modified Ultimatum Game (Study 1) and third-party punishment game (Study 2) to explore how the bilateral DLPFC disruption affects people's perception of violation of fairness norms and altruistic punishment decision in the gain and loss contexts. Typically, punishers intervene more often against and show more social outrage towards Dictators/Proposers who unfairly distribute losses than those who unfairly share gains. We found that disrupting the function of the left DLPFC in the second-party punishment and the bilateral DLPFC in the third-party punishment with rTMS effectively obliterated this difference, making participants punish unfairly shared gains as often as they usually would punish unfairly shared losses. In the altruistic punishment of maintaining the social fairness norms, the inhibition of the right DLPFC function will affect the deviation of individual information integration ability; the inhibition of the left DLPFC function will affect the assessment of the degree of violation of fairness norms and weaken impulse control, leading to attenuate the moderating effect of gain and loss contexts on altruistic punishment. Our findings emphasize that DLPFC is closely related to altruistic punishment and provide causal neuroscientific evidence.

Group bias under uncertain environment: A perspective of third-party punishment

Third-party punishment (TPP) effectively promotes social cooperation and maintains social norms in which equity plays a decisive role. When third-party and players are affiliated with different groups, there are two distinct phenomena-in-group favoritism (IGF) and black sheep effect (BSE)-in a certain environment. Equity loses its function as a benchmark when the environment is uncertain (de Kwaadsteniet et al., 2013). Thus, we hypothesized that individuals have a stronger IGF because there is more room for interpretations of their behaviors when an uncertain environment results in ambiguous social norms. We utilized a common resource dilemma (CRD) to manipulate the environmental uncertainty by varying the range of the resource size: a certain environment is represented by a resource size of fixed tokens (i.e., 500 tokens) and an uncertain one is represented by that of 300 to 700 tokens. Additionally, group affiliation is manipulated by the alumni relation between the third-party and players. The present study revealed that the uncertain environment led to stricter costly punishment. The experiment confirms the IGF rather than the BSE. We found boundary conditions between IGF and out-group derogation (OGD). When the players' harvest was not obviously violated, the size of TPP for a control group without group affiliation manipulation anchored those of the in-group and OGD occurred. Opposite, when the harvest was obviously violated, the size of TPP for the control group anchored those of the out-group and IGF occurred. The gender of the third-party affects its decision to punish, with men anchoring the control group's punishment to the in-group and showing OGD, whereas women anchoring the control group's punishment to the out-group and showing IGF.

Social status affects how third parties assess unfairly shared losses and unfairly shared gains

The present paper focused on how a third party's social status affects third-party intervention to maintain social fairness. Study 1 adopted a quasi-experimental design. Selecting high and low-status members of real social groups, we observed that high-status individuals intervened more forcibly and more frequently when assessing the fairness of players' behavior in a dictator game (DG). The manifestation of social status is generally divided into power and economic capital. In Study 2a, using the same DG punishment-compensation paradigm we randomly assigned the third party in the lab to high, medium, and low impact conditions, where their actions had relative multiplier effects on the resources retained by dictators and recipients. This tested whether the power to influence the situation would systematically affect third party's behavior. We found that greater influence predicted increased interventions. Study 2b investigated the influence of economic capital or intrinsic wealth on a third party's altruistic behavior by varying how much capital the third party had at their disposal to spend on punishment or recompensing. Having high capital predicted an increase in the size of penalty inflicted or compensation offered, but resource abundance had no effect on the likelihood that the third party would intervene. In conclusion, the paper showed that the social status of the third party truly does affect their altruistic interventions and the impact of social status on altruistic behaviors for maintaining fairness by the third party occurred primarily through the third parties' perception of their power. Furthermore, the influence of gain and loss contexts and social status on third-party punishment and compensation were independent of each other. This paper provided a new perspective for third-party altruistic behaviors and help to clarify the view of social fairness.

The source of punishment matters: Third-party punishment restrains observers from selfish behaviors better than does second-party punishment by shaping norm perceptions

Punishment aims to deter individuals’ selfish behaviors, but it can occasionally backfire. Some scholars have proposed promoting prosocial behaviors using punishment that communicates positive social norms because it provides additional motivation. However, it is unclear which factors affect the norm expressive function of punishment. This study proposes that third-party punishment communicates more positive normative information, and thus, promotes more prosocial behavior in observers than does second-party punishment. Using dictator games, we investigated the effects of second-party punishment compared to third-party punishment of another’s unfair sharing on observers’ norm perceptions and subsequent sharing decision-making. Two experiments consistently found that third-party punishment was more effective than second-party punishment at inducing observers’ beliefs that unfair distribution was unusual (descriptive norm) and unacceptable (injunctive norm). The altered descriptive but not injunctive norm perception further guided individuals’ own sharing behaviors. Taken together, these results suggest that third-party punishment might be better than second-party punishment at decreasing selfish behaviors by shaping individuals’ norm perceptions, especially descriptive norm perception, regarding the relevant behaviors.

Revisiting the form and function of conflict: Neurobiological, psychological, and cultural mechanisms for attack and defense within and between groups

Conflict can profoundly affect individuals and their groups. Oftentimes, conflict involves a clash between one side seeking change and increased gains through victory and the other side defending the status quo and protecting against loss and defeat. However, theory and empirical research largely neglected these conflicts between attackers and defenders, and the strategic, social, and psychological consequences of attack and defense remain poorly understood. To fill this void, we model (1) the clashing of attack and defense as games of strategy and reveal that (2) attack benefits from mismatching its target's level of defense, whereas defense benefits from matching the attacker's competitiveness. This suggests that (3) attack recruits neuroendocrine pathways underlying behavioral activation and overconfidence, whereas defense invokes neural networks for behavioral inhibition, vigilant scanning, and hostile attributions; and that (4) people invest less in attack than defense, and attack often fails. Finally, we propose that (5) in intergroup conflict, out-group attack needs institutional arrangements that motivate and coordinate collective action, whereas in-group defense benefits from endogenously emerging in-group identification. We discuss how games of attack and defense may have shaped human capacities for prosociality and aggression, and how third parties can regulate such conflicts and reduce their waste.

Punishment in the form of shared cost promotes altruism in the cooperative dilemma games

One phenomenon or social institution often observed in multi-agent interactions is the altruistic punishment, i.e. the punishment of unfair behavior by others at a personal cost. Inspired by the works focusing on punishment and the intricate mechanism behind it, we theoretically study the strategy evolution in the framework of two-strategy game models with the punishment on defectors, moreover, the cost of punishing will be evenly shared among the cooperators. Theoretical computations suggest that larger punishment on defectors or smaller punishment cost incurred by cooperators will enhance the fixation of altruistic cooperation in the population. Through the replicate dynamics, the group size of the randomly selected individuals from the sufficiently large population will notably affect the strategy evolution in populations nested within a dilemma. By theoretical modeling the concept of shared cost for punishment from one point of view, our findings underscore the importance of punishment with shared cost as a factor in real-life decisions in an evolutionary game context.

Who Punishes? The Status of the Punishers Affects the Perceived Success of, and Indirect Benefits From, “Moralistic” Punishment

“Moralistic” punishment of free riders can provide a beneficial reputation, but the immediate behavior is costly to the punisher. In Study 1, we investigated whether variation in status would be perceived to offset or mitigate the costs of punishment. One hundred and nineteen participants were presented with a vignette describing a punishment scenario. Participants predicted whether punishment would occur, how successful it would be, and indicated their attitude to the punisher. Participants believed only intervention by a high-status (HS) individual would be successful and that low-status (LS) individuals would not intervene at all. HS individuals predicted to punish successfully were seen as more formidable and likable. Study 2 investigated whether punishment was necessary to maintain an HS position. One hundred and seventeen participants were presented with a vignette describing a punishment scenario. Participants were asked to indicate whether they wished to be led by the punisher. HS individuals who did not punish were less likely to be chosen as leaders compared to HS punishers, whereas LS individuals who punished were no more or less likely to be chosen than nonpunishers. The results of both studies suggest that only HS individuals are expected to punish, likely because such a position offsets some of the costs of punishment. As a result, only HS individual can access the reputation benefits from punishment. Furthermore, an HS position may be dependent on the willingness to punish antisocial behavior. The ramifications that these results may have for the evolution of moralistic punishment are discussed.