锄强还是扶弱:急性应激如何影响第三方决策

Punishing or helping: The influence of acute stress on third-party decision-making

当面临违反规则或社会不公行为时,人们有很大的牺牲自我利益以恢复社会正义的趋势,其中第三方惩罚与第三方助人行为已被重点关注.许多重要的社会决策往往是在应激条件下做出的,应激如何影响个体对于同一情景中这两种利他选择以及维持自私之间的权衡尚未得到一致的结论.本研究使用第三方干预范式,从行为任务以及情景任务两方面来考察急性应激后被试对惩罚、助人、自私的选择偏好.研究发现相比中等不公平,极端不公平条件下惩罚以及助人的力度都会增加;另外,在中等不公平条件下,应激会增加第三方惩罚的趋势以及惩罚力度.同时应激也会降低第三方助人的趋势,但是在极端不公平条件下,应激与控制组无显著差异.在情景任务中,虽然在选择上两组无显著差异,但是应激组会认为车祸情景情节更为严重.本研究为急性应激对社会行为的影响提供了进一步的研究证据与解释,为后续研究提供了新思路.

In modern society,acute stress has become one of the main risk factors affecting human mental health and quality of life.Stress not only has a profound impact on the brain and cognition,but also affects human prosocial behaviors and social interactions.Acute stress has been implicated in modulating various social behaviors,including trust and empathy.However,it remains unclear how stress influences the third-party altruistic decision,especially in the face of conflicts between altruistic decisions and self-interest.When facing with a violation of justice,people show high probability of selfsacrifice to restore justice,but the optimal decision of the impact of stress on social decision-making in different circumstances is unclear.To address this question,we used a third-party intervention paradigm to assess participants’choice preferences after exposure to physical stress.In the third-party intervention task,participants could transfer MUs from their endowment to punish a norm violator or help the victim,and they could also leave the MUs to themselves.After the decision-making task was completed,participants were also asked to complete an analogous scenario task,including two crime scenarios:A robbery scenario and a traffic accident scenario.They were asked to put themselves in these situations and make calls as soon as possible based on priority,that is,call 110,the police,(i.e.,punish offenders);call 120,the First Aid Center,(i.e.,help victims);and call for themselves(i.e.,defend their own interests).First,we found that selfish choices focused on the condition of fair offers.Second,compared with the moderate unfair condition,the serious unfair condition increased punishment and help behavior.Additionally,for the trade-off between the two prosocial choices under the condition of moderate unfairness,the participants in the stress group tended to increase the punishment behavior and reduce the help behavior,when compared with the control group.We also found that the increase of punishment behavior was not only reflected in the choice preference,but also in the intensity of punishment.The participants in the stress group punished more,consistent with the"fight or flight"pattern,which is considered to be the typical human response to stress.However,under the serious unfairness condition,there was no significant difference between the stress group and the non-stress group.In the scenario task,although there was no significant difference between the two groups in the three options,the stress group evaluated the accident scene to be more serious.These findings suggest that when the third-party helping and punishment as an optional prosocial behavior,stressed individuals are accustomed to choosing punishment behavior.This study provides evidence and explanations for studying the effects of stress on prosocial behavior.