The Influence Of Power On Group Bias In Third Party Punishment

Third party punishment refers to the behavior that a third party unrelated to the violation itself is willing to sacrifice its own interests to punish the violator,which is important for maintaining social norms and keeping social order.Third-party punishment is not always just,and there is group bias,with people tending to protect the in-group more and punish the out-group more.Individuals are in the social order,the power inevitably influences individuals’ judgment and decision making.Whether the power has an impact on group bias in third-party punishment is yet to be studied.This research used the dictator game paradigm of third party punishment,conducted three experiments to deeply explore the influence of the sense of power on the bias in third party punishment.Experiment 1 used a 2(stateful power:high/low)×2(violator group:ingroup/outgroup)×2(victim group : ingroup / outgroup)three-factor mixed experimental design,inder to explore the influence of the stateful power on the group bias in the third party punishment.Experiment 1a used the recall method to manipulate individuals’ stateful power and social cue to manipulate the group identity of the violator and the victim,the results found that the stateful power did not affect group bias in third-party punishment.Experiment 1b used the role-play method to manipulate individuals’ stateful power and random cues to manipulate the group identity of the violator and the victim,the results found that the stateful power influenced group bias in third-party punishment: individuals with high stateful power imposed lighter punishment on in-group violators than on out-group violators,when out-group victims were treated unfairly;whereas individuals with low stateful power were not affected by the group identity of the violator and the victim.Experiment 2 used a 2(traitual power:high/low)×2(violator group : ingroup/outgroup)×2(victim group:ingroup/outgroup)three-factor mixed experimental design,inder to explore the effect of the traitual power on group bias in third-party punishment,the results found that the traitual power affected group bias in third-party punishment: when the ingroup victims were unfairly treated,individuals with high traitual power imposed heavier punishment on the violator when the ingroup victims were unfairly treated;whereas individuals with traitual power were not affected by the group identity of the victim.In summary,this research has found that the ingroup member received third-party favoritism in fairness norm violations,which demonstrated the existence of group bias in third-party punishment.However,this group bias affects the powerful and the powerless differently,the powerful being more affected by the group bias,the powerless being less affected by the group bias.The results of this research support the hypothesis of self-enhancement of power,suggesting that the powerful are self-interested individuals who have equity claims but defend in-group interests when they engage in third-party punishment.