Fig 1.
Third-party punishment and helping game paradigms.
a) In the first step of the games, the Dictator transfers any X amount of $10 (100 points) to the anonymous Recipient while the Third Party observes. b) In the Punishment Game, the Third Party may spend any Y amount of $5 (50 points) to take twice the amount from the dictator, constrained by the amount the dictator originally gave (cannot punish below $0). c) In the Helping Game, the Third Party may spend any Y amount of $5 (50 points) to transfer twice the amount to the Recipient. In the Compassion and Reappraisal Training study, all participants witnessed an unfair Dictator transfer (< $2.50/$10).
Fig 2.
The association between trait compassion and third-party altruistic behavior after an unfair dictator transfer.
a) In the Helping Game, individuals who report greater compassion give more to the recipient after an unfair interaction (< = 25%). Including the two “extreme altruist” outliers in Helping Game responses, the correlation remains significant (r89 = 0.214, p < 0.05). b) In the Punishment Game, trait compassion is not associated with punishment behavior after an unfair interaction in the full sample. However, within Punishers (individuals who decided to punish at all and spend > $0, indicated by black shaded circles), those who report greater compassion decide to punish less at trend level. † p < 0.1, * p < 0.05
Table 1.
Trait empathic concern predicts altruistic behavior after an unfair dictator transfer even after controlling for confounding variables in a hierarchical regression model.
Step 1 modeled potential confounding variables of social desirability, general prosocial behavior (as indicated by transfers made when participants played as the dictator), family income, previous earnings or punishment in the game before playing as the third party, and current mood (state positive or negative affect). Trait empathic concern (the emotional component of compassion) was entered in Step 2 and was measured by the Empathic Concern subscale of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (Davis, 1980). Punishers represent a subset of participants who played the Punishment Game that decided to punish by spending > $0 (N = 37/89).
Table 2.
Semipartial correlations indicating the unique variance predicted by each variable in the full hierarchical regression model.
Trait empathic concern (the emotional component of compassion) predicts unique variance in both the Helping Game and within Punishers (spend > $0) in the Punishment Game.
Fig 3.
Altruistic behavior after short-term online Compassion Training or Reappraisal Training.
Individuals who learn Compassion Training were more altruistic towards the Recipient in the Helping Game after witnessing an unfair interaction compared to Reappraisal Training (responses were ranked among 30 participants, * independent t28 = 2.29, p < .05). Compassion trainees spent 1.87 times more money than Reappraisal trainees in order to altruistically help the recipient. Compassion trainees on average spent $1.14 (mean rank = 19.0) and increased equality between the dictator by 29%, where the Reappraisal trainees spent an average of $0.61 (mean rank = 12.8) and increased the equality by 15%. Compassion Training did not significantly alter altruistic punishment towards the Dictator compared to Reappraisal Training. Punishment Game responses were ranked among 41 participants. Error bars indicate the standard error of the % mean rank.