Doctoral Dissertation Research in DRMS: Victim Compensation

University Of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia PA

Investigators

Abstract

Past research on victim compensation specifically has focused on empathy as its primary motivator. However, recent research has found that, when someone experiences a loss due to the violation of a social norm, moral indignation rather than empathy drives third parties to compensate victims. This research project builds on that finding to investigate the underlying motivation for anger-driven compensation. Using behavioral games from experimental economics and scale measures from psychology, this research tests the general hypothesis that people compensate victims of social norm violations in order to signal their own endorsement of the norm. This research advances the science of giving by providing a more nuanced view of the psychological determinants of giving behavior. This understanding lays the framework for further applied work to increase voluntary assistance as well as norm conformity. A large body of psychological work has shown that compensation is driven by feeling empathic concern for the victim. Compensatory behavior has been explained as a form of efficient resource sharing through indirect reciprocity. Recent research, however, has demonstrated that, when a loss is due to the violation of a social norm, moral anger, and not empathic concern, drives third parties to compensate victims. Given this difference in motivation from other types of compensatory behavior, this result suggests a distinct psychological mechanism underlying the compensation of victims of social norm violations. As the punishment of norm violators has also been shown to be motivated by anger, punishment and compensation may both be driven by the same psychological mechanism and shaped by the same evolutionary pressures. In light of this similarity, this research develops the norm broadcasting hypothesis: the function of compensating the victim of a social norm violation is to signal the compensator's endorsement of the violated norm. Adapting models of third party punishment, this research explores two possible hypotheses underlying the benefits that this public broadcasting delivers to the compensator, both of which could simultaneously contribute to the emergence of this behavior. The first is the reputation broadcasting hypothesis: by compensators signaling their endorsement of the norm, observers will prefer interacting with the compensator in the future. The second is the norm stabilization hypothesis: by signaling their endorsement of the norm, the compensator mitigates the norm undermining effect of the violation, increasing the likelihood that the norm is maintained and, in the case of cooperative norms, increasing the expected benefit to the compensator from cooperation's surplus generating properties in future interactions. Using a series of modified trust games, the four proposed studies test these three hypotheses. Because the finding that moral anger drives the compensation of victims of norm violations grounds this project, the first study replicates this result with monetary incentives. The second study, designed to test the general norm broadcasting hypothesis, measures whether third parties compensate more when they are being observed by others. The third study tests a prediction of the norm stabilization hypothesis: that those who observe the victim of a norm violation being compensated are more likely to obey the norm themselves. Lastly, the fourth study tests a prediction of the reputation broadcasting hypothesis: that people prefer those who previously compensated a norm violation victim when selecting a partner for a game in a similar social context.