A Study Of The Influence Of Actors' Social Class On Third-party Moral Judgments

Social class' s impact on the cognition and social behavior was one of the most important research fields about the social class in recent years.However,the study on this field only limited in actor's social class,few study focus on the perspective of third-party,and outcomes and theories is in conflict.In this study,we gradually explore the effect of actors' social class on social expectations,the underlying mechanism,the content of social expectations,and the rationality of social expectations.So we adopts the dictator game paradigm and manipulates the social class of the actors in study 1,require subject score fairness and punish actor after observing the distribution from dictator,to verify which is the most powerful theory in role theory,empathy theory and outcome amplifier.The result of experiment 1 shows that the higher actor's social class,the lower fairness score and the heavier punish.Further analysis of variance shows that only under the condition of allocating 5 yen,there is no difference in the fairness score and the amount of punishment between dictators of high social class and low social class.Under the conditions of distributing 1,2,3,and 4 yen,the high social class dictator who allocated same amount of money with low social class dictator received lower fairness scoring and heavier punishment.After experiment,subject were asked to fill in a questionnaire on how much different social class dictator allocate at least you will consider the distribution is fair,the result show that the higher dictator's social class,the more money was required to allocate.The results are consistent with prediction of role theory,which means role theory is the most powerful explanation for the double evaluation criteria pf high and low social classes.In study 2,we adopted the revised prisoner dilemma,added non-participation choice,and manipulated the player's social class,compared the distinction that subject assessed and punish to high and low social class players in different behavior.The result show that moral judgment' and punishment' distinction of high and low social class in betray behavior condition is larger than in non-participation behavior condition,however both behaviors are considered as antisocial behavior and betray is more harmful to others than non-participation.It means the content of social expectation is that people wish actor benefit others and society.In study 3,we adopts the moral dilemma task and manipulating actor's wealth condition,rich or poor,which is not beneficial to rescue the innocent.If rational,the moral judgment to the rich and poor would be no significant difference when they do same recue behavior.Vice versa.The result show there is no significant difference between the rich condition and the poor condition.It means social expectation is not necessarily related to social class,but related to performance ability of the actor,social expectation is rational to some extent.Combining the three experiments in this study,we believe that:(1)social class has relevance,as the social class of actors increases,social expectation increases;(2)social class has social functionality,people expect actors Enough perform behaviors that are beneficial to others and society,as the behavior's degree of beneficial and harmful to others,people have higher expectations for high social classes;(3)Social classes have correspondence,social class is inevitable to social expectation,but related to the factors(family economy,education,ability,occupation,etc.)and the performance ability based on the factors,the greater the performance ability,the higher the social expectations.