Punishing and compensating others at your own expense: The role of empathic concern on reactions to distributive injustice

Abstract

When confronted with violations of justice, people may be motivated not only to punish the violator, but also to compensate the victim. Whereas prior research has primarily concentrated on the question of when people are willing to punish, we provide a more comprehensive picture by also studying the willingness to compensate and by assessing the moderating role of empathic concern. Study 1 introduces the altruistic compensation game and shows that especially high empathic (compared to low empathic) people are willing to give up parts of their own resources to financially compensate the victims of distributive injustice. Study 2 completes the picture by directly comparing altruistic compensation with altruistic punishment. The study showed that high empathic people decided to compensate the victim, but low empathic people decided to punish the offender.

Risk behavior for gain, loss, and mixed prospects

“…We further expect compensation to be a direct result of the anger, which is independent from the empathic concerns that may be triggered simultaneously (Leliveld et al 2012). Some initial support for this expectation can already be found in the experiment by Lotz et al (2011b), who found that visibility mattered for empathy: the goal of empathy is to comfort someone, but if the victim does not know about the unfair allocation there is no one to comfort.…”

“…Finally, studies that did include positive consequences typically did not directly measure situational, state anger. For example, Leliveld et al (2012) and Prooijen (2010) looked at prosocial consequences after injustice but did not include a measurement of anger. Deffenbacher et al (1996) showed a positive correlation between trait anger and aggressive consequences, and Vitaglione and Barnett (2003) showed that there was no direct relation between trait empathic anger and helping or punishing.…”

“…Leliveld et al 2012). Participants filled in the amount of money spent on punishing Rick, compensating Mark, and the amount they kept for themselves (which needed to add up to e50).…”

“…Participants filled in the amount of money spent on punishing Rick, compensating Mark, and the amount they kept for themselves (which needed to add up to e50). 2 Participants then completed the 7-item empathic concern scale (α = 0.83; Davis 1983Davis , 1994, as used in Leliveld et al 2012), and a trait anger scale based on a shortened version of the trait anger subscale of the State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory (α = 0.87; STAXI; Spielberger 1988). 3 These additional scales were included for control reasons because these traits might influence the relation between state anger and compensation or punishment (e.g., Deffenbacher et al 1996;Leliveld et al 2012;Vitaglione and Barnett 2003).…”

“…For example, Lotz et al (2011b) found that people generally compensated more than they punished in third-party situations. Furthermore, Leliveld et al (2012) found that people who scored high on dispositional empathy had a preference for compensating victims instead of punishing perpetrators in these situations. Though these studies have shown that people both compensate and punish, the question is what drives people to act prosocially in triadic situations?…”