Cognition Lab, Psychology Department, Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia.
Br J Soc Psychol. 2024 Jan;63(1):453-471. doi: 10.1111/bjso.12687. Epub 2023 Oct 3.
Studies on third-party punishment (TPP) have shown it promotes cooperation and prosocial behaviour, albeit at a cost to the punisher. Contrary to the view that such punishment is entirely altruistic, recent research suggests that punishers gain reputational benefits from third-party punishing in the form of increased trustworthiness. Nevertheless, both how the signal is determined and the honesty of the signalling function of TPP have not been fully examined. Here we present the results of four experiments (n = 1695, prolific.co) in which we examined how TPP signalling varies as a function of its deservedness and severity. Experiments 1A and 1B use incentivized economic game paradigms to show how deservedness, impacts the trustworthiness signalled by the punisher. Experiment 2A expands on traditional dichotomous punishment decisions to show how signalled trustworthiness depends on different levels of TPP severity. Experiment 2B isolates the signalling effectiveness of severity by decoupling it from the corresponding incurred cost to punish and examines its impact on signalled trustworthiness. Overall, we found that punishment signalling is sensitive to deservedness and severity but not independent of other factors such as the cost to punish.
第三方惩罚（TPP）的研究表明，它促进了合作和亲社会行为，尽管对惩罚者来说有代价。与第三方惩罚完全是利他主义的观点相反，最近的研究表明，惩罚者从第三方惩罚中获得了声誉上的好处，表现为更高的可信度。然而，信号是如何确定的，以及 TPP 的信号功能的诚实性都没有得到充分的研究。在这里，我们提出了四个实验（n=1695， prolific.co）的结果，我们在这些实验中研究了 TPP 信号如何随其应得性和严重性而变化。实验 1A 和 1B 使用有奖励的经济博弈范式来表明应得性如何影响惩罚者所发出的可信度信号。实验 2A 将传统的二分法惩罚决策扩展到表明信号可信度取决于不同程度的 TPP 严重性。实验 2B 通过将惩罚的相应成本与严重性的信号有效性分离，来研究其对信号可信度的影响。总的来说，我们发现惩罚信号对应得性和严重性很敏感，但不是独立于其他因素，如惩罚的成本。
