Abstract
Third-party punishment refers to a behavioral phenomenon whereby people punish wrongdoers even if their sanction incurs personal costs but yields no direct benefits. Given the eye cues demonstrated ability to convey signals of being observed, its effect on third-party punishment, driven by virtue of its effects on others' perceptions, was investigated. In addition, emotional message featured in the eye region is crucial in social interaction, whether the emotion within the eyes serves this effect with varying degrees of influence has rarely considered. The present study aimed at exploring (a) the watching eyes effect on the third-party punishment and (b) whether this effect varies from negative eyes to positive eyes. By two experiments using a modified Third-Party Dictator Game, we displayed either eye images or control images above the question on whether to punish the dictators or not. There was no emotional diversity of eye cues in Experiment 1, and most participants tended to punish for unfair offer. However, the appearance of eye images increased the punishment relative to control images. In Experiment 2, the eye cues were subdivided into positive and negative. The effect of watching eyes on the third-party punishment was significantly stronger when the eyes were negative than positive. Results revealed that eye cues play a role in promoting the third-party punishment and offer a potential insight into the mixed findings, such that the emotion within the eyes, especially the negative expression in the eyes, may influence the watching eyes effect.
Highlights
Third-party punishment (TPP), a behavior phenomenon that occurs in the situation of norm violation when the violator is punished by an individual whose interests have not been harmed (Fehr and Gächter, 2002; Fehr and Fischbacher, 2004a; Rodrigues et al, 2020), appears crossculturally (Henrich et al, 2006), and in different ages (McAuliffe et al, 2015; Yang et al, 2018)
As it’s unlikely to bring direct benefits to the punisher, and TPP is usually beneficial to other group members, punitive actions are essentially equivalent to showing good qualities (Jordan and Rand, 2019; Chen and Yang, 2020), such as fairness and generosity (Nelissen, 2008), being trustworthy (Jordan et al, 2016), or willing to sacrifice for others (Jordan and Rand, 2017), and through the punitive action, TPP can, in the long run, help the punisher build a good reputation and improve the probability of getting help from others (Chen and Yang, 2020)
We conducted two experiments to investigate whether the appearance of eye cues affects third parties’ punishment on the violator of the norm of fair sharing (Experiment 1), and we attempted to examine whether the emotion within eyes affects watching eyes effect (Experiment 2)
Summary
Third-party punishment (TPP), a behavior phenomenon that occurs in the situation of norm violation when the violator is punished by an individual whose interests have not been harmed (Fehr and Gächter, 2002; Fehr and Fischbacher, 2004a; Rodrigues et al, 2020), appears crossculturally (Henrich et al, 2006), and in different ages (McAuliffe et al, 2015; Yang et al, 2018). Numerous studies examining the potential motivations underlying TPP have suggested that people penalize for more self-oriented reasons as well as social norms maintenance (Rodrigues et al, 2020). Models are driven by reputation effect, such as the costly signaling model, suggesting the cognitive mechanisms underlying TPP “Watching Eyes” Triggers Third-Party Punishment might have evolved because of their signaling benefits (Johnstone and Bshary, 2004; Kurzban et al, 2007), that is, individuals accept abandoning self-interests to inflict punishment in order to gain a positive appreciation with observers. As it’s unlikely to bring direct benefits to the punisher, and TPP is usually beneficial to other group members, punitive actions are essentially equivalent to showing good qualities (Jordan and Rand, 2019; Chen and Yang, 2020), such as fairness and generosity (Nelissen, 2008), being trustworthy (Jordan et al, 2016), or willing to sacrifice for others (Jordan and Rand, 2017), and through the punitive action, TPP can, in the long run, help the punisher build a good reputation and improve the probability of getting help from others (Chen and Yang, 2020)
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