Fudan Institute on Ageing, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China; Ministry of education (MOE) Laboratory for National Development and Intelligent Governance, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China.
Ministry of education (MOE) Laboratory for National Development and Intelligent Governance, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China; School of Social Development and Public Policy, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China.
Brain Res Bull. 2024 Oct 15;217:111082. doi: 10.1016/j.brainresbull.2024.111082. Epub 2024 Sep 20.
Costly third-party punishment (TPP) is an effective way to enforce fairness norms and promote cooperation. Recent studies have shown that the third party considers not only the proposer's suggested allocation but also the receiver's response to the allocation, which was typically ignored in traditional TPP studies when making punishment decisions. However, it remains unclear whether and how the varying unfair allocations and receivers' responses are integrated into third-party punishment. The current study addressed these issues at behavioral and electrophysiological levels by employing a modified third-party punishment task involving proposers' highly or moderately unfair allocations and the receivers' acceptance or rejection responses. At the behavioral level, participants punished proposers more often when receivers rejected relative to accepted unfair allocations. This effect was further modulated by the unfairness degree of allocations, indicated by a more pronounced rejection-sensitive effect when participants observed the moderately unfair offers. Electrophysiologically, when the receiver rejected the moderately unfair allocations, a stronger late-stage component P300/LPP, which was considered to be involved in allocations of attention resources, was found. Meanwhile, separated from the P300/LPP, the P200 associated with early attention capture demonstrated a rejection-sensitive effect. Together, in the costly TPP studies, the receiver is typically designated as passive and silent, and her/his responses to unfairness are conventionally ignored. However, our results indicate that except for the proposer's distribution behavior, the receiver's response does have an impact on third-party punishment in a way that interacts with the unfairness of allocations.
第三方惩罚（TPP）是执行公平规范和促进合作的有效途径。最近的研究表明，第三方不仅考虑提议者建议的分配，还考虑接收者对分配的反应，而在传统的 TPP 研究中，当做出惩罚决策时，通常忽略了这一点。然而，目前尚不清楚不同的不公平分配和接收者的反应是否以及如何被整合到第三方惩罚中。本研究通过采用一种改良的第三方惩罚任务来解决这些问题，该任务涉及提议者的高度不公平或中度不公平分配以及接收者的接受或拒绝反应。在行为水平上，当接收者拒绝接受不公平的分配时，与接受不公平分配相比，参与者更经常地惩罚提议者。这种效应进一步受到分配不公平程度的调节，当参与者观察到中度不公平的提议时，拒绝敏感效应更为明显。在电生理水平上，当接收者拒绝中度不公平的分配时，发现了一个更强的晚期成分 P300/LPP，这被认为与注意力资源的分配有关。同时，与 P300/LPP 分离的 P200 与早期注意力捕获相关，表现出拒绝敏感效应。总之，在昂贵的 TPP 研究中，接收者通常被指定为被动和沉默的，她/他对不公平的反应通常被忽视。然而，我们的结果表明，除了提议者的分配行为外，接收者的反应确实会以一种与分配不公平相互作用的方式对第三方惩罚产生影响。
