Influence of empathic concern on preferences for third-party punishment and evaluations of punishment outcomes

This dataset was derived from two behavioral experiments employing an adapted third-party punishment paradigm. Empathic concern toward the proposer was manipulated by presenting the proposer as either a financially disadvantaged left-behind student or an ordinary student. Participants consistently assumed the role of the recipient and were required to accept the proposer’s allocation, as rejection was not permitted. During this process, a third party could choose whether to use public resources to punish the proposer.Specifically, following the presentation of the allocation, participants first selected their preference regarding the third party’s action. In Experiment 1, the third party’s actions consisted of punishment or no punishment. In Experiment 2, the third party’s actions were further differentiated into no punishment, partial punishment, and complete punishment. After the third party’s action was implemented, the final outcome was presented, and participants evaluated the appropriateness or satisfaction with the outcome. In addition, across empathy and non-empathy contexts, participants provided ratings of fairness perception and moral outrage for each allocation.The experimental procedures were programmed and administered using E-Prime software. Stimuli were presented and behavioral data were collected in a standard laboratory environment. Data analyses were conducted using SPSS 27.0, including t tests, repeated-measures analyses of variance, and mediation analyses. Preference choice data were further analyzed using computational modeling implemented with custom MATLAB code.