Marczyk Jesse
Department of Psychology, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2017 Feb 10;12(2):e0171298. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0171298. eCollection 2017.
Previous theorizing about punishment has suggested that humans desire to punish inequality per se. However, the research supporting such an interpretation contains important methodological confounds. The main objective of the current experiment was to remove those confounds in order to test whether generating inequality per se is punished. Participants were recruited from an online market to take part in a wealth-alteration game with an ostensible second player. The participants were given an option to deduct from the other player's payment as punishment for their behavior during the game. The results suggest that human punishment does not appear to be motivated by inequality per se, as inequality that was generated without inflicting costs on others was not reliably punished. Instead, punishment seems to respond primarily to the infliction of costs, with inequality only becoming relevant as a secondary input for punishment decisions. The theoretical significance of this finding is discussed in the context of its possible adaptive value.
先前关于惩罚的理论推测表明，人类渴望惩罚不平等本身。然而，支持这种解释的研究存在重要的方法学混淆因素。当前实验的主要目的是消除这些混淆因素，以测试不平等本身是否会受到惩罚。参与者是从一个在线市场招募而来，参与一场与表面上的第二名玩家进行的财富改变游戏。参与者可以选择扣除另一名玩家的报酬，作为对其在游戏中行为的惩罚。结果表明，人类的惩罚似乎并非由不平等本身所驱动，因为在未给他人造成成本的情况下产生的不平等并未得到可靠的惩罚。相反，惩罚似乎主要对成本的施加做出反应，不平等仅作为惩罚决策的次要输入因素才变得相关。这一发现的理论意义在其可能的适应性价值背景下进行了讨论。
