Within-individual associations among third-party intervention strategies: Third-party helpers, but not punishers, reward generosity.

Third parties intervene in others' behaviors in various ways, such as punishing a harm-doer and/or helping a victim.Moreover, third parties may reward generous altruists.As such, various types of third-party intervention strategies are conceivable.Nevertheless, researchers have disproportionately focused on third-party punishment.In the present study, 87 undergraduate students were exposed to unfair, fair, and generous allocators and their recipients, and were allowed to punish, help, and/or reward the players.The results indicated that participants were more likely to punish unfair allocators than fair allocators; more likely to help recipients of unfair allocators than those of fair allocators; and more likely to reward generous allocators than fair allocators.Examinations of intra-individual associations of these strategies revealed that two prosocial strategies (third-party help and third-party reward) were strongly tied to each other (i.e., participants who helped victims of unfair allocators were more likely to reward generous allocators).However, third-party punishment was not significantly associated with the other two strategies.The emotional correlates of the three intervention strategies were also investigated.Third-party punishment was correlated with moral outrage and reduced empathic concern for unfair allocators.Third-party help was correlated with empathic concern for the victim.Third-party reward was correlated with empathic concern for generous allocators.