The Impact Of Facial Attractiveness On Third-Party Punishment Under The Unfair Situation

Third-party punishment is the behavior of a third party that has nothing to do with the violation itself and is willing to sacrifice its own interests to punish the violators.It is important for maintaining social norms and social order.Preference for fairness theory holds that people prefer fairness and hate unfairness,and punish those fairness norm violators in order to eliminate the aversion caused by unfairness.However,people are not "rational people".In addition to being affected by objective unfair results,the punishment of third parties may also be disturbed by many irrational factors,such as facial attractiveness,third parties' sensitivity to fairness and justice(i.e.,observer sensitivity)and violators' intentions to make unfair behaviors.This study recruited college students and graduate students online as subjects.Three experiments were conducted using the dictator game paradigm and its variants of third-party punishment,and the impact of the attractiveness of the violators' face on the third-party punishment in unfair situations was further explored.In experiment 1,by dividing six distribution levels,the differences in the willingness of third parties to punish high/low facial attractiveness violators under various degrees of unfairness are discussed in detail.The results found that only under the 50/50 fair distribution conditions,there is no difference in the intensity of the third party 's willingness to punish high / low facial attractiveness violators;under the other five unfair distribution conditions,the third party 's willingness to punish high facial attractiveness violators is lower than low facial attractiveness violators.Experiment 2 sets three levels of high,medium and low unfair distribution on the basis of experiment 1,and adds observer sensitivity to further explore the moderating effect of third-party sensitivity to fairness and justice on the stereotype effect of face attractiveness.It was found that for the third party with high observer sensitivity,the punishment willingness and punishment behavior at the three unfair distribution levels are not affected by the facial attractiveness;while for the third party with low observer sensitivity,the willingness and behavior to punish the violators with high facial attractiveness are weaker in the medium unfair distribution.Experiment 3 added the reference factors for the judges' judgment,that is,whether the violators intentionally caused an unfair distribution result,thereby exploring the moderating effect of distribution intention on the relationship between facial attractiveness and third-party punishment.It was found that in unintentional situations,high / low facial attractiveness had no significant effect on the third party 's willingness to punish;in intentional situations,third party 's willingness to punish high facial attractiveness violators is lower.However,in terms of third parties' punishment behavior,regardless of whether the violators intentionally caused an unfair result,the third-party punishment for high facial attractiveness violators is more benevolent.To sum up,individuals with high facial attractiveness will be treated more tolerantly by third parties when they violate fair norms(or even intentionally make unfair behavior),which proves the existence of attraction-leniency effect in third-party punishment.And the effect varies from person to person and will be affected by the moderation of the justice sensitivity level of third parties.