Social status affects how third parties assess unfairly shared losses and unfairly shared gains

The present paper focused on how a third party’s social status affects third‐party intervention to maintain social fairness. Study 1 adopted a quasi‐experimental design. Selecting high and low‐status members of real social groups, we observed that high‐status individuals intervened more forcibly and more frequently when assessing the fairness of players’ behavior in a dictator game (DG). The manifestation of social status is generally divided into power and economic capital. In Study 2a, using the same DG punishment–compensation paradigm we randomly assigned the third party in the lab to high, medium, and low impact conditions, where their actions had relative multiplier effects on the resources retained by dictators and recipients. This tested whether the power to influence the situation would systematically affect third party’s behavior. We found that greater influence predicted increased interventions. Study 2b investigated the influence of economic capital or intrinsic wealth on a third party’s altruistic behavior by varying how much capital the third party had at their disposal to spend on punishment or recompensing. Having high capital predicted an increase in the size of penalty inflicted or compensation offered, but resource abundance had no effect on the likelihood that the third party would intervene. In conclusion, the paper showed that the social status of the third party truly does affect their altruistic interventions and the impact of social status on altruistic behaviors for maintaining fairness by the third party occurred primarily through the third parties’ perception of their power. Furthermore, the influence of gain and loss contexts and social status on third‐party punishment and compensation were independent of each other. This paper provided a new perspective for third‐party altruistic behaviors and help to clarify the view of social fairness.