Zhang Lei, Jin Yan, Xia Lin, Xu Bibo, Syed Abdullah Syed Mohamad
School of Educational Studies, Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), Penang, Malaysia.
School of Education Sciences, Huizhou University, Huizhou, China.
Front Psychol. 2022 Apr 19;13:816168. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.816168. eCollection 2022.
The behavior decisions in social dilemmas are highlighted in sociological, economic, and social psychological studies. Across two studies, the iterated prisoner's dilemma is used as a basic paradigm to explore the effects of social distance and asymmetric reward and punishment on an individual's cooperative behavior. Experiment 1 ( = 80) used a 2 (social distance: intimacy vs. strangeness) × 2 (symmetry of rewards: symmetric rewards vs. asymmetric rewards) within-subject design and demonstrated that when there were only two options, namely, cooperation and defection, cooperative behavior was influenced by social distance and symmetry of rewards, respectively, and the interaction was not significant. Experiment 2 ( = 80) used a 2 (social distance: intimacy vs. strangeness) × 2 (symmetry of punishment: symmetric punishment vs. asymmetric punishment) within-subject design and showed that the cooperative behavior of participants decreased when the punishment option was added, and the two levels of symmetry and asymmetry were set. Specifically, compared with the symmetric punishment group, the asymmetric punishment group was more likely to choose a defection strategy and less likely to use a punishment strategy. Moreover, there was a marginal interaction effect between social distance and symmetry of punishment, and symmetry of punishment was a significant mediator in the relationship between social distance and individual cooperation. Specifically, asymmetric punishment reduced only the cooperation rate (CR) between participants and their friends. In conclusion, in dilemma situations, asymmetric reward did not influence individual cooperative behavior at different social distances, while asymmetric punishment did, because the sense of loss was more likely to awaken an individual's social comparison motives.
社会困境中的行为决策在社会学、经济学和社会心理学研究中受到关注。在两项研究中，重复囚徒困境被用作基本范式，以探讨社会距离以及奖惩不对称对个体合作行为的影响。实验1（N = 80）采用2（社会距离：亲密与陌生）×2（奖励对称性：对称奖励与不对称奖励）被试内设计，结果表明，当只有合作和背叛两种选择时，合作行为分别受到社会距离和奖励对称性的影响，且二者的交互作用不显著。实验2（N = 80）采用2（社会距离：亲密与陌生）×2（惩罚对称性：对称惩罚与不对称惩罚）被试内设计，结果显示，当增加惩罚选项并设置对称和不对称两个水平时，参与者的合作行为减少。具体而言，与对称惩罚组相比，不对称惩罚组更有可能选择背叛策略，而较少使用惩罚策略。此外，社会距离与惩罚对称性之间存在边缘交互效应，惩罚对称性在社会距离与个体合作的关系中是一个显著的中介变量。具体来说，不对称惩罚仅降低了参与者与其朋友之间的合作率（CR）。总之，在困境情境中，不对称奖励在不同社会距离下并未影响个体的合作行为，而不对称惩罚则有影响，因为损失感更有可能唤醒个体的社会比较动机。
