The Impact Of Pain Experience On Third Party Punishment

Pain,as a special tactile experience,occurs widely in people’s daily life.At the same time,people are also faced with various decisions every day.According to the existing research,pain has an impact on individual choice.Based on the two-dimensional structure of pain,this study examines the impact of individual pain experience on third-party punishment from the perspective of both physical and psychological pain experience.In experiment 1,60 non-psychological undergraduates(36 female students and 24 male students;M = 21.03 years old,SD = 1.36)from two universities in Sichuan Province were selected to participate in the experiment.The effects of cold pressor pain(CPT)and third party punishment task(Third party punishment)on the third party punishment under physiological pain experience were preliminarily explored.Stimulating pain,non-stimulating pain)*2(third-party punishment type: ultimatum,dictator)mixed experimental design.The study found that,compared with the painless group,when the pain group was in the state of physiological pain,they would have a higher level of inequity when they chose from the third party’s standpoint,and then tended to give the proposer a higher degree of punishment.At the same time,in different types of punishment situations,the pain group also showed a certain difference in decision-making,that is,there was task specificity.In the emotional evaluation of the subjects,it was found that the subjects in the state of physical pain showed the emotional state of pain and anxiety,but according to the further analysis,neither pain nor anxiety played a regulatory role in the process of the influence of physical pain on third party punishment.On the basis of material evaluation and experiment 1,this study found that the control of cold compression intensity had different effects on individuals.Thus,Experiment 2(97 persons,58 girls,39 boys;M = 20.93,SD = 0.95)further explored the influence of the difference of physiological pain intensity on third-party punishment;namely,using 3(pain intensity: mild pain,moderate pain,severe pain)* 2(Third Party Punishment Type: Ultimatum,Dictator)Mixed Experiment Design.The results show that individuals in severe pain state exhibit more punishment behavior and experience higher sense of injustice.It can be seen that with the increase of pain intensity,individuals will show a higher "selfish and altruistic" behavior in the face of unfair situations,that is,they would rather sacrifice their own interests to punish unfair proposers,so as to safeguard the interests of respondents.At the same time,the analysis of emotions in Experiment 2 found that: with the increase of physical pain intensity,subjects’ anxiety and pain emotions also increased.And both emotions play a moderating role in the process of different intensity of pain affecting the third-party punishment of ultimatum type.We speculate that the reason for the difference between the results of Experiment 1 and that of Experiment 1 is probably that the subjects in Experiment 1 only analyzed pain and non-pain,while in experiment 2,the subjects were the emotional effects of individuals with different pain intensity,that is,there were differences among different pain intensity.In experiment 3,64 college students(34 female students and 30 male students;M = 20.84,SD = 1.15)were selected from a university in Sichuan.Video-induced psychological pain experience was used to stimulate the participants’ psychological pain experience,and the effect of psychological pain experience,another component of pain,on third-party punishment was investigated.Mixed experimental design was used as in experiment 1.The results showed that physical pain experience had an impact on third-party punishment.Consistently,that is,psychological pain experience also affects the degree of punishment to the proponent in the third party punishment task,and psychological pain experience can also induce anxiety and distress of the subjects.However,further analysis revealed that,like the physiological pain study in experiment 1,neither pain nor anxiety played a moderating role in the process of psychological pain affecting third-party punishment.At the same time,in Experiment 2 and 3,there was task particularity as in experiment 1,that is,in different types of third-party punishment situations,the pain group showed certain decision-making differences;that is,the third-party punishment for the dictator type was significantly higher than the third-party punishment for the ultimatum type.According to the results of the above sub-experiments,the final conclusions of this study are as follows:Firstly,in the face of unfair distribution,individuals with pain experience will show a higher degree of punishment to unfair proposers,that is,there is more tendency of "self-sacrifice and altruism".Secondly,with the increase of the intensity of physical pain,the above-mentioned punishment behavior is more severe.Third,compared with the ultimatum third-party punishment task,individuals in pain state in the dictator third-party punishment task show higher punishment intensity,and from the perspective of the decision-making strategies given by the subjects,this difference stems from the "cognitive effect of rights".Fourthly,anxiety and pain did not play a moderating role in the process of the influence of physical and psychological pain on third-party punishment,while anxiety and pain played a moderating role in the process of the influence of different pain intensity on the third-party punishment of ultimatum type.