Guo Rui, Ding Jianshu, Wu Zhen
Department of Psychology, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China.
Department of Psychology, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China.
Acta Psychol (Amst). 2020 Apr;205:103055. doi: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2020.103055. Epub 2020 Mar 17.
Two experiments were conducted to investigate how intergroup relation moderates group bias in Third-Party Punishment (TPP) of selfishness. Participants competed or cooperated with the other group and then performed a TPP task in which they could reduce an allocator's benefits after paying a low cost (paying 1/3 unit deducts 1 unit of the allocator in Experiment 1, n = 76) or a high cost (paying 1 unit deducts 1 unit of the allocator in Experiment 2, n = 81). The results supported the "mere-preference hypothesis" of group bias, showing that people were more likely to tolerate their ingroups while punishing outgroups more harshly. Furthermore, when the cost was low, competition increased people's punishment toward outgroups' selfishness but not toward ingroup members, thus enlarging the group bias. When the cost was high, however, this effect disappeared, indicating that people consider a "cost-to-impact ratio" when selectively enforcing the fairness norm in intergroup conflicts. Our findings suggest how intergroup relation and cost-benefit analysis interact together to influence the group bias in TPP, providing insights into mechanisms underlying the maintenance of fairness norms and decision-making in a group context.
进行了两项实验，以研究群体间关系如何调节第三方惩罚（TPP）中对自私行为的群体偏见。参与者与另一组进行竞争或合作，然后执行一项TPP任务，在该任务中，他们可以在付出低成本（在实验1中付出1/3单位会扣除分配者1单位，n = 76）或高成本（在实验2中付出1单位会扣除分配者1单位，n = 81）后减少分配者的收益。结果支持了群体偏见的“纯粹偏好假设”，表明人们在惩罚外群体时更严厉，而对自己的内群体则更宽容。此外，当成本较低时，竞争会增加人们对外群体自私行为的惩罚，但不会增加对本群体成员的惩罚，从而扩大了群体偏见。然而，当成本较高时，这种效应消失了，这表明人们在群体间冲突中选择性地执行公平规范时会考虑“成本效益比”。我们的研究结果表明群体间关系和成本效益分析如何相互作用，以影响TPP中的群体偏见，为公平规范维护和群体背景下决策的潜在机制提供了见解。
