Intentions versus outcomes: Determinants of costly third-party interventions in fairness maintenance

Abstract

Third-party punishment (TPP) and third-party compensation (TPC) are two basic forms of intervention for maintaining fairness. We investigated whether third parties base their intervention on unfair outcomes, intentions, or both through four experiments using economic games and a single-paper meta-analysis. Participants were presented with monetary allocation scenarios designed to reflect different intention-outcome integrations, and then made punishment or compensation decisions. We found that when allocators had no control over the outcome (Experiment 1), TPC was driven solely by outcome fairness. When allocators had partial control (Experiments 2a and 2b), both intention and outcome had main effects on TPC without interaction. Furthermore, when receivers believed the allocator's intention was unfair (Experiment 3), the interaction of intention and outcome significantly affected TPC: intention played a significant role only when the outcome was unfair. The influence of intention and outcome on TPC was driven by third-party moral anger towards the allocators and compassion towards the receivers. In contrast, TPP was consistently shaped by the interaction between intention and outcome across all experiments, regardless of the allocator's control and the receiver's belief. Unfair outcome intensified the intention effect on punishment compared to fair outcome. This effect was driven by third-party compassion. These findings suggest that while third parties consistently integrate both intention and outcome in punishment, their focus on either factor in compensation is influenced by the allocator's control and the receiver's belief. This deepens our understanding of how and why third-party observers engage in third-party intervention.