Empathy-based tolerance towards poor norm violators in third-party punishment.

Area of Science:

• Social Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Behavioral Economics

Background:

• Third-party punishment (TPP) is crucial for enforcing social norms.
• Understanding factors influencing TPP, like proposer's economic status, is important for fairness research.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how the economic status of proposers affects third parties' behavioral and neural responses to unfairness.
• To examine empathy-related neural responses during third-party punishment decisions.

Main Methods:

• Participants acted as third parties in a TPP game, deciding on punishment for proposers of high or low economic status.
• Behavioral data and electroencephalogram (EEG) were recorded during the game.
• Offers varied in fairness, with a focus on highly unfair scenarios.

Main Results:

• Third parties exhibited reduced punishment for unfair offers from poor proposers compared to rich proposers.
• This leniency towards poor proposers was more pronounced for highly unfair offers.
• Increased P200 amplitude, linked to empathy, was observed for highly unfair offers from poor proposers.

Conclusions:

• Third parties tend to tolerate norm-violating behavior from individuals of lower economic status.
• Economic status significantly influences third-party punishment decisions, with greater empathy shown towards poorer norm violators.
• Findings provide neuroscientific evidence for the impact of proposer's economic status on TPP.