The Inhibitory Effect Of Victim’s History Of Norm Violations On Third-party Justice And Its Underlying Mechanism

People’s pursuit of justice is not only reflected in the maintenance of personal interests but also in the maintenance of interests of others who have no relevance to their own.When witnessing injustice – even at the expense of personal interests –people are willing to punish perpetrators or compensate victims.This phenomenon is called third-party justice,and punitive and compensatory reactions to injustice are called third-party interventions.Although third-party interventions abound in social life,they are constrained by many factors.Researchers have explored the impact of relevant factors on third-party interventions from different perspectives,including perpetrators,victims,and contexts.However,knowledge about how victims’ past violations affect third-party interventions remains limited.Exploration of above issue,on one hand,contributes to fully understanding the conditions and mechanisms of third-party justice,and on the other hand,expands our knowledge about carry-over effect of an individual’s history of norm violations on subsequent prosocial behaviors of others.Previous studies have shown that an individual’s behavioral history often affects others’ responses to his or her subsequent sufferings,including cognitive,emotional,and behavioral responses.Researchers have found that even if causal links between negative experiences and prior misdeeds are missing,an individual’s past violations still enhance people’s deservingness perception,while also reducing compassion and anger.What’s more,people also reduce their trust and helping behaviors towards individuals with violation history.Therefore,how will a victim’s history of norm violations affect third-party justice and what roles third party’s deservingness perception,compassion and anger play in it.In addition,researchers have explained the inhibitory effect of an individual’s past violation on others’ subsequent helping behavior towards him or her by punishment motivation.However,this explanation still lacks empirical evidence.Therefore,further exploration is needed to determine whether the punishment motivation plays a role in it.To answer questions above,three sub-studies were conducted to systematically explore the impact of a victim’s history of norm violations on third-party justice and the underlying mechanisms.Study 1 aimed to reveal the effect of a victim’s history of norm violations on thirdparty interventions.The task included two stages.At stage one,economic games,such as the sequential prisoner’s dilemma game(experiments 1–3)and the trust game(experiment 4),were adopted to manipulate the victim’s behavioral history.In the above-mentioned games,the victim acted as the second decision-maker.In the face of the partner’s cooperative behavior,the victim either obeyed reciprocal norm and also chose cooperation to achieve a win–win situation,or violated reciprocal norm and chose betrayal to maximize his or her own interests.In above two games,participants acted as observers to watch the victim’s and his or her partner’s decisions and then evaluated them.At stage two,the dictator game was adopted to create an unjust situation.The participants were told that after finishing the economic game,the victim cooperated with a new partner to complete another task and obtained some benefits.The victim and the new partner contributed equally in that task.The shared benefits were distributed by the new partner,and the victim was only a passive recipient,who received unfair distribution.In this phase,participants acted as third parties who could spend their money to reduce the new partner’s gains(punishment)or increase the victim’s gains(compensation).Given that existing research has shown that an increase in intervention costs can affect third-party interventions,study 1 examined the impact of a victim’s past behavior(norm violation vs norm compliance)on third-party interventions with(experiments 1a & 1b)or without cost(experiment 1c)by manipulating whether the intervention cost was involved in participants’ remuneration.Given that both intention and outcome of the victim’s past behavior in experiment 1differed between conditions,it was difficult to determine whether the differences of third-party interventions between conditions were related to violation intention.Thus,both of the intention(no intention vs intention)and outcome(low vs high gains)of a victim’s past behavior were manipulated to clarify the impact of the intention of the victim’s past behavior on third-party interventions(experiment 2).In addition,previous studies have found that behaviors of others often serve as models to guide individuals’ social behaviors.The prosocial behaviors of others can motivate individuals to engage in the same or different prosocial behaviors,and demonstrations of negative behaviors by others can also guide individuals to engage in similar violations.Therefore,study 1examined the explanatory power of the demonstration effect of victim’ s past behaviors for the results of experiment 1(experiment 3).Finally,based on experiment 1,the victim’s past behavior was refined to explore how different degrees of violations influenced third-party interventions(experiment 4).The following results were obtained in study 1.(1)Under the cost condition,a victim’s norm-violating history had similar inhibitory effects on third-party punishment and compensation(experiments 1a & 1b),whereas under the no-cost condition,the inhibitory effect was greater on compensation than on punishment(experiment 1c).The results above revealed that a victim’s history of norm violations inhibited third-party interventions,and the involvement of a third party’s self-interests could affect the relative magnitude of the inhibitory effects on third-party punishment and compensation.(2)If the victim violated norms in the past,the third party showed a preference for punishment,whereas if the victim obeyed norms in the past,the third party’s intervention preference was situation-dependent(experiments 1a～1c).(3)The effect of outcome on third-party interventions was sensitive to intentionality,which was only observed in the intention condition.This result indicated that a decline in thirdparty interventions could not be fully explained by the outcome of a victim’s past behavior,thus clarifying the causality between the norm-violating intention of a victim’s past behavior and a decline in third-party interventions(experiment 2).(4)The type of behavior demonstrated to the third party(self-interested behavior vs prosocial behavior)didn’t affect third-party interventions,thus excluding the explanation of the demonstration effect of victim’s past behavior for the results of experiment 1(experiment 3).(5)The severity of a victim’s past violation exerted a significant linear effect on third-party interventions.The more severe a victim’s violation was,the less the third party intervened(experiment 4).Study 2 aimed to clarify the mechanisms underlying the effects of a victim’s past violation on third-party interventions.Study 2 first investigated the roles of third party’s deservingness perception,compassion and anger to clarify the cognitive-emotional processes underlying two types of third-party interventions(experiment 5).Next,punishment for victim’s past violation was manipulated to explore the role of third party’s punishment motivation in the inhibitory effect of a victim’s past violation on third-party interventions(experiment 6).Finally,event-related potentials technique was adopted to explore temporal characteristics of brain activities for fairness processing,which might be modulated by the victim’s past violation.Previous studies have found that cognitive processing for justice is associated with three EEG components,AN1,MFN,and P300.AN1 reflects early attentional allocation to stimuli;MFN reflects the degree of deviation between expectations and actual results;and P300 reflects deeper and more complex processing for stimuli.Therefore,these three EEG components were taken into consideration.The following results were obtained in study 2.(1)For third-party punishment,victim’s deservingness of injustice and anger acted as serial mediators,whereas for third-party compensation,victim’s deservingness of injustice and compassion acted as serial mediators(experiment 5).(2)Third parties increased both punishment and compensation based on the knowledge that the victim’s past violation had already been punished.Moreover,we found evidence that this effect could be explained by the cognitive-emotional processes mentioned above(experiment 6).(3)In unfairdistribution condition,the victim’s past violation induced more positive MFN,while in fair-distribution condition,the victim’s past violation induced more negative MFN and decreased P300 amplitude(experiment 7).(4)The victim’s past violation reduced third party’s midfrontal theta activity(4～8Hz),and enhanced global efficiency of the brain network when the distribution was unfair(experiment 7).By combining the results of experiments 5 and 6,we found a relatively complete psychological mechanism underlying the effect of a victim’s past violation on third-party interventions.The victim’s past violation first stimulated third party’s punishment motivation,which then strengthened third party’s perception of the victim’s deservingness of injustice,leading to decreased anger and compassion.Finally,the emotions affected third-party interventions.It should be noted that for third-party punishment,anger acted as a mediator,whereas for third-party compensation,compassion acted as a mediator.Experiment 7 showed that the victim’s history of norm violations modulated MFN and P300,which respectively characterized the middle and late stages of justice processing.This result indicated that victim’s past violation did not affect third party’s early attention,but affected the evaluation of results in later stages.What’s more,the victim’s history of norm violations weakened third party’s altruistic motivation and thus decreased cognitive control for intervention,which led to decrease of midfrontal theta activity.The exploration of topological structure characteristics of brain network based on graph theory showed that the victim’s past violation enhanced third party’s global efficiency of brain network when third party witnessed victim’s encounter.This effect may be due to victim’s past violation weakening third party’s cognitive conflict.Study 3 aimed at examining whether the conclusions of studies 1 and 2 could be generalized to real-life situations.Therefore,study 3 adopted an experimental vignette methodology.Experiment 8 was similar to experiment 5,and experiment 9 was similar to experiment 6.The results of study 3 showed that(1)the victim’s history of norm violations not only inhibited third party’s willingness to punish the perpetrator but also compensate the victim;additionally,the inhibitory effect on compensation willingness was greater;(2)the results about third party’s intervention preference were consistent with those of study 1;(3)only the motivational-cognitive-emotional process for thirdparty compensation mentioned in study 2 was verified in study 3,and the cognitive process in the pathway for punishment has not been proven.Further research is needed to verify the pathway for third-party punishment that found in study 2.Taken together,the study found the inhibitory effect of a victim’s history of norm violations on third-party justice.Furthermore,the study explored how a victim’s violation history affected third-party interventions from multiple perspectives,including motivation,cognition,and emotion,and obtained a motivational-cognitiveemotional process.The above findings enrich the research scope in the field of thirdparty justice,help deepen the understanding of the mechanisms and boundary conditions of third-party justice,and also have some inspiration and reference to the maintenance of justice in real life.