Why do children, adolescents, and adults engage in costly punishment to sanction fairness violations? Two studies investigated the differential impact of incidental anger on the costly punishment... Show moreWhy do children, adolescents, and adults engage in costly punishment to sanction fairness violations? Two studies investigated the differential impact of incidental anger on the costly punishment of 8-year-olds, 13-year-olds, and adults. Focusing on experimentally manipulated incidental anger allows for a causal investigation as to whether and how anger affects costly punishment in these age groups in addition to other motives such as inequity aversion. Study 1 (N = 210) assessed the effect of incidental anger (vs. a neutral emotion) on second-party punishment, where punishers were direct victims of fairness violations. Study 2 (N = 208) examined third-party punishment, where the punisher was an observer unaffected by the violation. Across ages, incidental anger increased the second-party punishment of unequal offers but not equal offers. Thus, anger seems to play a causal role in the punishment of unfairness when fairness violations are self-relevant. As predicted, adults’ third-party punishment of unequal offers was higher in the incidental anger condition than in the neutral emotion condition. Children’s third-party punishment of unfairness was not affected by the emotion condition, but incidental anger increased adolescents’ third-party punishment across offers. Overall, our data suggest that the association between anger and costly punishment is based on the self-relevance of the violation. In third-party situations, where unfairness does not affect the self, social-cognitive processes that develop well into adulthood, such as emotional appraisals, might be necessary for third parties to engage in costly punishment. Show less
Dillen L.F. van; Lelieveld G.-J.; Hofmann W.; Kwaadsteniet E.W. de 2021
Do people in need share less with others? And what if the recipient is in need too? In two experiments, we addressed these questions by testing whether fasting-induced and self-rated hunger... Show moreDo people in need share less with others? And what if the recipient is in need too? In two experiments, we addressed these questions by testing whether fasting-induced and self-rated hunger influence allocations in a dictator game in which allocators distribute food (cookies) between themselves and a recipient. In line with rational choice theory, which posits that a deprived good should increase in value (Smith, 1759; Von Neumann & Morgenstern, 1944), findings from the current studies consistently showed that participants shared fewer cookies when they were, and/or perceived themselves to be, in a food-deprived state. Across studies, participants moreover seemed to project their own hunger onto the recipient's state, as emotional perspective taking accounts propose, but this did not vary between fasting and control conditions, and did not translate into actual sharing differences, suggesting that these formed no basis for other-regarding decisions. Whether or not participants accounted for the recipient's hunger when redistributing foods, depended on whether they possessed actual knowledge of the recipient's deprivation state, such that participants engaged in greater sharing when they knew the recipient had been fasting (Study 2), but not in the absence of such knowledge (Study 1). Taken together, the results involving the need state of the recipient seem to provide most support for the need principle, that suggests that people share out of distributive justice considerations, where they take into account the recipient's need (Deutsch, 1975). Show less
Pleasures are tightly intertwined with the body. Enjoyment derived from sex, feeding and social touch originate from somatosensory and gustatory processing, and pleasant emotions also markedly... Show morePleasures are tightly intertwined with the body. Enjoyment derived from sex, feeding and social touch originate from somatosensory and gustatory processing, and pleasant emotions also markedly influence bodily states tied to the reproductive, digestive, skeletomuscular, and endocrine systems. Here, we review recent research on bodily pleasures, focussing on consummatory sensory pleasures. We discuss how different pleasures have distinct sensory inputs and behavioural outputs and review the data on the role of the somatosensory and interoceptive systems in social bonding. Finally, we review the role of gustatory pleasures in feeding and obesity, and discuss the underlying pathophysiological mechanisms. We conclude that different pleasures have distinct inputs and specific outputs, and that their regulatory functions should be understood in light of these specific profiles in addition to generic reward mechanisms. Show less