Abstract:

The uniqueness of the co-operational behavior in human society may be related to the function of social norms. Norm Activation Theory believes that social norms have a great influence on human pro-social behavior only when activated, which exactly expresses the process of the Third-party Punishment. To explore the psychological mechanism of the norm activation process, an experiment was designed which contained both a Dictator Game (DG) and a Third-party Game (TP). TP was used as a way to activate the social norm of fairness. The norm activated subjects took both TP and DG during the experiment while the non-activated ones took only DG. A significant enhancement of the pro-social behavior in DG was found in norm activated subjects after TP. We also found that social responsibility played an important role in norm activation. Subjects with higher social responsibility presented more pro-social after activated. The result revealed that a third-party subject punished the behavior against social norms even the punishment was costly. This phenomenon was explained as an arouser of both the responsibility to protect social norms and anger about the destruct of social norms. Further more, higher Social Responsibility a person had implied a stronger activation of social norms, which brought more anger and pro-social behaviors. With experimental errors and explanations of other theories eliminated, this result revealed that there were two important processes in norm activation: the arouser of the responsibility to protect social norms and the inspirer of the anger about the destruct of social norms. These two processes implied that social norm activation was not only a cognitive awakening process but also an emotional inspirer. Therefore, responsibility, which contained both cognitive and emotional component, might be paid more attention to in studies about the activation of social norms.

Key words: Social Norm activation Theory, Social responsibility, Anger, Altruistic punishment, the Third-party Game

摘要：

社会规范需要被激活才能显著影响个体行为，第三方惩罚（TP）正是这样一个激活的过程。本研究将TP引入独裁者博弈（DG），社会规范被激活的被试参与了TP与DG，未激活的被试只参与了DG。结果表明，前者在TP之后显著提升了DG中的亲社会行为。进一步的分析发现，在社会规范激活过程中，社会责任感越高的个体被激活的程度越高，对违背社会规范的行为产生的愤怒情绪也越高，从而产生了更高水平的亲社会行为。在排除了实验中其他因素和相关理论的解释后，这一基本的实验结果表明社会规范激活受到社会责任感的影响并伴随着特定情绪的激发。

关键词: 社会规范激活, 社会责任感, 愤怒, 利他性惩罚, 第三方博弈