Compensating victims of unfairness leads to greater reputational and cooperative benefits than punishing perpetrators; even people who themselves prefer to punish still prefer social partners who compensate

Reputational and cooperative benefits of third-party compensation. Indrajeet Patil, Nathan Dhaliwal, Fiery Cushman. Human Behavior and Evolution Society 31st annual meeting. Boston 2019. http://tiny.cc/aa1w6y

Abstract: Humans sometimes intervene in moral conflicts between others—so-called “third-party responding”. Sometimes third parties punish perpetrators; other times they provide aid to victims. Across 24 studies (N > 20,000), we provide a comprehensive examination of the different benefits third-parties accrue based on their choice between these two forms of response, as well as third-parties’ understanding of those benefits. We find that compensating victims leads to greater reputational and cooperative benefits than punishing perpetrators. In fact, even people who themselves prefer to punish still prefer social partners who compensate. We also find that the signal that is sent via third-party compensating may be an honest signal of trustworthiness. Furthermore, we find that people accurately anticipate that observers would prefer them to compensate victims than to punish perpetrators and that participants personal decisions about whether to compensate or punish is based in part on the belief that the social norm is to compensate. Finally, we find that this selective preference for a compensation strategy is limited to fairness violations and does not extend to harm violations. These findings provide an extensive analysis of the causes and consequences of third-party responding to moral violations.

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