Abstract
Third-party punishment, as an altruistic behavior, was found to relate to inequity aversion in previous research. Previous researchers have found that altruistic tendencies, as an individual difference, can affect resource division. Here, using the event-related potential (ERP) technique and a third-party punishment of dictator game paradigm, we explored third-party punishments in high and low altruists and recorded their EEG data. Behavioral results showed high altruists (vs. low altruists) were more likely to punish the dictators in unfair offers. ERP results revealed that patterns of medial frontal negativity (MFN) were modulated by unfairness. For high altruists, high unfair offers (90:10) elicited a larger MFN than medium unfair offers (70:30) and fair offers (50:50). By contrast, for low altruists, fair offers elicited larger MFN while high unfair offers caused the minimal MFN. It is suggested that the altruistic tendency effect influences fairness consideration in the early stage of evaluation. Moreover, the results provide further neuroscience evidence for inequity aversion.
Highlights
Altruistic punishment refers to punishment imposed by individuals who punish free riders in the group it is costly and yields no material benefits for the punishers
For the amplitude of P300, we considered gender as a covariate, a 2 × 3 × 2 ANOVA yielded a significant interaction between altruistic tendency and fairness level, F(2,54) = 5.48, p = 0.008
High unfair offers elicited larger medial frontal negativity (MFN) than medium unfair offers and fair offers; for low altruists, in contrast, fair offers elicited larger MFN, and high unfair offers caused the minimal MFN, which suggest that the altruistic tendency effect influence fairness consideration in the early stage of evaluation
Summary
Altruistic punishment refers to punishment imposed by individuals who punish free riders in the group it is costly and yields no material benefits for the punishers. This punishment may achieve and sustain social cooperation (Fehr and Gächter, 2002). Altruistic punishment includes second-party punishment and third-party punishment. Second-party punishment refers to punishment inflicted by the person who suffered from the violation. Third-party punishment refers to the circumstances in which a third party who did not directly suffer from the violation is willing to pay a cost to punish the violator (Fehr and Fischbacher, 2004a,b)
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