To Blame or Not? Modulating Third-Party Punishment with the Framing Effect

People as third-party observers, without direct self-interest, may punish norm violators to maintain social norms. However, third-party judgment and the follow-up punishment might be susceptible to the way we frame (i.e., verbally describe) a norm violation. We conducted a behavioral and a neuroimaging experiment to investigate the above phenomenon, which we call the third-party framing effect. In these experiments, participants observed an anonymous perpetrator deciding whether to keep her/his economic benefit while exposing a victim to a risk of physical pain (described as harming others in one condition and not helping others in the other condition), then they had a chance to punish that perpetrator at their own cost. Our results showed that the participants were more willing to execute third-party punishment under the harm frame compared to the help frame, manifesting a framing effect. Self-reported anger toward perpetrators mediated the relationship between empathy toward victims and the framing effect. Meanwhile, activation of the insula mediated the relationship between mid-cingulate cortex activation and the framing effect; the functional connectivity between these regions significantly predicted the size of the framing effect. These findings shed light on the psychological and neural mechanisms of the third-party framing effect.

Automated summary

This study investigates the third-party framing effect, which refers to how the punishment of norm violators by third-party observers might be influenced by the way a norm violation is verbally described. Results showed that participants were more likely to execute third-party punishment when the norm violation was framed as harm rather than as failure to help. The mediating role of anger towards perpetrators and the involvement of specific brain regions, such as the insula and mid-cingulate cortex, in the framing effect were also observed.