Emotional and Evolutionary Determinants of Victim Compensation
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2017 Why We Help The Wronged: Emotional And Evolutionary Determinants Of Victim Compensation Erik Wells Thulin University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the Social Psychology Commons Recommended Citation Thulin, Erik Wells, "Why We Help The Wronged: Emotional And Evolutionary Determinants Of Victim Compensation" (2017). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 2818. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2818 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2818 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Why We Help The Wronged: Emotional And Evolutionary Determinants Of Victim Compensation Abstract Why do third parties choose to help the victims of norm violations? In Chapter 1, we address this question at the emotional level. We show a relationship between environment and motivating emotion, in which moral outrage motivates the compensation of norm violation victims, whereas empathic concern drives compensation in other situations, at both the trait (Study 1) and state (Studies 2 and 3) levels. This finding presents a novel question for evolutionary psychology. Differing emotional drivers are taken to represent distinct underlying cognitive systems. While previous evolutionary models based on social insurance through indirect reciprocity can account for domain-general empathically driven compensation, they fail to address morally outraged compensation of norm violation victims. In Chapter 2, we extend two evolutionary models of punishment, showing how those same selection pressures may also account for victim compensation. We first propose the reputation-signaling hypothesis, under which compensators signal their community status and knowledge of local norms, making observers more likely to select them as future interaction partners. We also develop the norm stabilization hypothesis, in which compensators broadcast their endorsement of the violated norm, leading conditional conformists to continue to comply, thereby stabilizing the norm within the group. In Chapter 3, we develop and test empirical predictions of both hypotheses. In Study 4, we find support for the joint prediction of both the reputation-signaling and norm stabilization hypotheses that compensation is increased when observed by others. In Study 5, we show that, consistent with the norm stabilization hypothesis, those who observe compensation of a victim of a norm violation are more likely to conform to that norm. In Study 6, we test the prediction of the reputation-signaling hypothesis that those who compensate are preferred as interaction partners to those who act similarly pro-socially, but not through compensation. Here we find mixed results, with compensators being preferred to those who show general pro-sociality, but less attractive than those who conform to an unrelated norm. Together, this work provides the first emotional and ve olutionary account for the compensation of norm violation victims. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Psychology First Advisor Cristina Bicchieri Keywords anger, compensation, emotion, evolution Subject Categories Psychology | Social and Behavioral Sciences | Social Psychology This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2818 WHY WE HELP THE WRONGED: EMOTIONAL AND EVOLUTIONARY DETERMINANTS OF VICTIM COMPENSATION Erik W. Thulin A DISSERTATION in Psychology Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2017 Supervisor of Dissertation ____________________ Cristina Bicchieri Professor, Philosophy and Psychology Graduate Group Chairperson _____________________ Sara Jaffee Professor, Psychology Dissertation Committee Barbara Mellers, Professor, Psychology and Marketing Robert Kurzban, Professor, Psychology ACKNOWLEDGMENT Thank you to my parents, Judee and Chuck. Your steadfast advocacy and support, no matter my interests, allowed me to achieve. Thank you to my partner, Azusa. You have been the bedrock of my life. It is on that foundation that this dissertation was built. Thank you to my colleagues in the Behavioral Ethics Lab. You have served as an invaluable sounding board of incredibly diverse backgrounds, challenging my preconceptions. Thank you to my committee, Barb and Rob. Your selfless offering of your extensive knowledge and experience has made me a better researcher. Thank you to my advisor and mentor, Cristina. Your continued advice throughout my training has been invaluable. But that was the least of your contributions. You took me on as a student asking what you could do to realize my goals, opening doors I never knew were there. You shaped this dissertation, but also my life. For that, I will be forever grateful. You are all my co-authors in this endeavor. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. SES-1559320 and Graduate Research Fellowship Grant No. DGE-1321851. ii ABSTRACT WHY WE HELP THE WRONGED: EMOTIONAL AND EVOLUTIONARY DETERMINANTS OF VICTIM COMPENSATION Erik W. Thulin Cristina Bicchieri Why do third parties choose to help the victims of norm violations? In Chapter 1, we address this question at the emotional level. We show a relationship between environment and motivating emotion, in which moral outrage motivates the compensation of norm violation victims, whereas empathic concern drives compensation in other situations, at both the trait (Study 1) and state (Studies 2 and 3) levels. This finding presents a novel question for evolutionary psychology. Differing emotional drivers are taken to represent distinct underlying cognitive systems. While previous evolutionary models based on social insurance through indirect reciprocity can account for domain- general empathically driven compensation, they fail to address morally outraged compensation of norm violation victims. In Chapter 2, we extend two evolutionary models of punishment, showing how those same selection pressures may also account for victim compensation. We first propose the reputation-signaling hypothesis, under which compensators signal their community status and knowledge of local norms, making observers more likely to select them as future interaction partners. We also develop the norm stabilization hypothesis, in which compensators broadcast their endorsement of the violated norm, leading conditional conformists to continue to comply, thereby stabilizing the norm within the group. In Chapter 3, we develop and test empirical predictions of iii both hypotheses. In Study 4, we find support for the joint prediction of both the reputation-signaling and norm stabilization hypotheses that compensation is increased when observed by others. In Study 5, we show that, consistent with the norm stabilization hypothesis, those who observe compensation of a victim of a norm violation are more likely to conform to that norm. In Study 6, we test the prediction of the reputation- signaling hypothesis that those who compensate are preferred as interaction partners to those who act similarly pro-socially, but not through compensation. Here we find mixed results, with compensators being preferred to those who show general pro-sociality, but less attractive than those who conform to an unrelated norm. Together, this work provides the first emotional and evolutionary account for the compensation of norm violation victims. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENT ............................................................................................................ II ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................ III LIST OF TABLES .................................................................................................................... VII LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ................................................................................................. VII INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER 1 ................................................................................................................................. 6 Study 1 .................................................................................................................................................... 9 Method ..................................................................................................................................................... 10 Results ...................................................................................................................................................... 13 Discussion ................................................................................................................................................ 15 Study 2.a ............................................................................................................................................... 16 Method ..................................................................................................................................................... 17 Results .....................................................................................................................................................