Dataset Information

"Watching Eyes" Triggers Third-Party Punishment: The Role of Emotion Within the Eyes.

ABSTRACT: Third-party punishment refers to a behavioral phenomenon whereby people punish wrongdoers even if their sanction incurs personal costs but yields no direct benefits. Given the eye cues demonstrated ability to convey signals of being observed, its effect on third-party punishment, driven by virtue of its effects on others' perceptions, was investigated. In addition, emotional message featured in the eye region is crucial in social interaction, whether the emotion within the eyes serves this effect with varying degrees of influence has rarely considered. The present study aimed at exploring (a) the watching eyes effect on the third-party punishment and (b) whether this effect varies from negative eyes to positive eyes. By two experiments using a modified Third-Party Dictator Game, we displayed either eye images or control images above the question on whether to punish the dictators or not. There was no emotional diversity of eye cues in Experiment 1, and most participants tended to punish for unfair offer. However, the appearance of eye images increased the punishment relative to control images. In Experiment 2, the eye cues were subdivided into positive and negative. The effect of watching eyes on the third-party punishment was significantly stronger when the eyes were negative than positive. Results revealed that eye cues play a role in promoting the third-party punishment and offer a potential insight into the mixed findings, such that the emotion within the eyes, especially the negative expression in the eyes, may influence the watching eyes effect.

SUBMITTER: Li M

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8320698 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Similar Datasets

Project description:UNLABELLED:The evolved capacity for third-party punishment is considered crucial to the emergence and maintenance of elaborate human social organization and is central to the modern provision of fairness and justice within society. Although it is well established that the mental state of the offender and the severity of the harm he caused are the two primary predictors of punishment decisions, the precise cognitive and brain mechanisms by which these distinct components are evaluated and integrated into a punishment decision are poorly understood. Using fMRI, here we implement a novel experimental design to functionally dissociate the mechanisms underlying evaluation, integration, and decision that were conflated in previous studies of third-party punishment. Behaviorally, the punishment decision is primarily defined by a superadditive interaction between harm and mental state, with subjects weighing the interaction factor more than the single factors of harm and mental state. On a neural level, evaluation of harms engaged brain areas associated with affective and somatosensory processing, whereas mental state evaluation primarily recruited circuitry involved in mentalization. Harm and mental state evaluations are integrated in medial prefrontal and posterior cingulate structures, with the amygdala acting as a pivotal hub of the interaction between harm and mental state. This integrated information is used by the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex at the time of the decision to assign an appropriate punishment through a distributed coding system. Together, these findings provide a blueprint of the brain mechanisms by which neutral third parties render punishment decisions. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT:Punishment undergirds large-scale cooperation and helps dispense criminal justice. Yet it is currently unknown precisely how people assess the mental states of offenders, evaluate the harms they caused, and integrate those two components into a single punishment decision. Using a new design, we isolated these three processes, identifying the distinct brain systems and activities that enable each. Additional findings suggest that the amygdala plays a crucial role in mediating the interaction of mental state and harm information, whereas the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex plays a crucial, final-stage role, both in integrating mental state and harm information and in selecting a suitable punishment amount. These findings deepen our understanding of how punishment decisions are made, which may someday help to improve them.

Dataset Information

"Watching Eyes" Triggers Third-Party Punishment: The Role of Emotion Within the Eyes.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets