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Anger motivates costly punishment of unfair behavior

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Abstract

In this article we provide empirical support for anger as an underlying mechanism of costly punishment in three studies. A first study showed that participants punished other players more the less these players cooperated in a Public Goods Game and that this effect was mediated by experienced anger. A second study showed that participants appraised non-cooperation in a Sequential Trust Game (STG) as more unfair than cooperation and that they imposed more costly punishment on unfair others as compared to fair others. The effect of appraised unfairness on imposed punishment was mediated by anger. Moreover, a third study showed that following an anger induction in an unrelated task, participants imposed more costly punishment on unfair players in a subsequent STG.

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Notes

  1. Some scholars use the term altruistic punishment instead of costly punishment. Although the former term is most often used in the literature, the latter is in our view more precise. One might argue whether altruistic punishment as described in the literature is always truly altruistic. For instance, punishment can be regarded as self-interested, despite its private costs, if the punisher benefits from increased public good provision over the long term (O’Gorman et al. 2005).

  2. Same results were obtained when we analyzed the data with ANOVAs.

  3. The control condition of Study 3 can be seen as a conceptual replication of Study 1 and 2.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Social Psychology, University of Amsterdam, Weesperplein 4, 1018 XA, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Elise C. Seip & Mark Rotteveel

  2. Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands

    Wilco W. Van Dijk

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  1. Elise C. Seip
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  2. Wilco W. Van Dijk
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  3. Mark Rotteveel
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Correspondence to Elise C. Seip.

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This research was supported by the MacArthur Foundation Network on Economic Environments and the Evolution of Individual Preferences and Social Norms.

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Seip, E.C., Van Dijk, W.W. & Rotteveel, M. Anger motivates costly punishment of unfair behavior. Motiv Emot 38, 578–588 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-014-9395-4

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