Prosocial consequences of third-party anger

Anger is one of the most frequently experienced emotions (e.g., Schimmack and Diener 1997). It is elicited by events that are unpleasant or undesired, such as situations of goal obstruction, injustice, or unfairness (e.g., Berkowitz and Harmon-Jones 2004; Frijda 1986, 1987; Kuppens et al. 2003; Scherer 1993). Because of its prevalence and because the experience of anger typically involves negative situations and feelings, it is not surprising that this emotion has long been seen as one of the most exemplary negative emotions (e.g., Averill 1982; Berkowitz 1990; Izard 1991; Russell 1991).

Interestingly, the behaviors that angry people display appear to be diverse and not so unambiguously negative. Anger is an approach-motivated emotion (Carver and Harmon-Jones 2009) that brings forth an effort to remove the violation of what ‘ought’ to be (Frijda 1986). Studies have suggested that this approach motivation can take the form of aggressive, punitive, and antagonistic behaviors (e.g., Bougie et al. 2003; Darley and Pittman 2003; Fischer and Roseman 2007; Lemay et al. 2012; Lotz et al. 2011a; Nelissen and Zeelenberg 2009; Pillutla and Murnighan 1996; Rimé 2009; Roseman et al. 1994; Coillie and Mechelen 2006; Wetzer et al. 2007). Although this classical view of anger clearly dominates the literature, there are mixed findings suggesting positive outcomes as well. Specifically, there is some evidence that anger can promote positive behaviors such as social sharing, compensation to a victim, and helping the disadvantaged (e.g., Iyer et al. 2007; Lotz et al. 2011a, b; Wakslak et al. 2007).

Still, research showing a direct relation between anger and prosocial or helping behaviors is lacking (for a review, see Van Doorn et al. 2014). In this paper we examine the effect of anger on subsequent prosocial behavior of third-parties and seek to explain both antagonistic and prosocial consequences of anger in terms of equity-repair concerns. Before we describe the rationale of our studies it is useful to note that in this article we use the term prosocial behavior to refer to behavior aimed at helping a victim in order to restore equity. We do not propose that anger leads to a general tendency to act prosocially to anyone or at any time. In fact, as we explain below, we believe it is crucial to differentiate between first- and third-party anger to understand the various behavioral expressions of anger.

We can experience anger both as a result of the harm done to ourselves (first-party anger) and as a result of the harm done to someone else (third-party anger). Although first- and third-party anger might feel similar, there are reasons to believe that the behaviors that follow from these emotional experiences are different. With this we do not suggest that there are necessarily two different forms of anger; instead we argue that different situations offer different behavioral constraints and affordances for the expression of anger’s approach-motivation (cf., Frijda and Zeelenberg 2001). For example, being angry after unjustly receiving a disadvantageously low amount of money (first-person victim) could lead to the restoration of equity by punishing the perpetrator who distributed the money. Being angry because someone else unjustly received a disadvantageously low amount of money (third-party observer) could lead to the restoration of equity by punishing the perpetrator, but also by compensating the ‘victim’. Thus, observers of inequity (‘third parties’) have a wider range of restorative behaviors at their disposal than victims of inequity do. After all, victims can rarely compensate themselves (cf., Feldman Hall et al. 2014).

It has already been shown that various prosocial behaviors aimed at restoring equity may occur in third-party situations. For example, Lotz et al. (2011b) found that people generally compensated more than they punished in third-party situations. Furthermore, Leliveld et al. (2012) found that people who scored high on dispositional empathy had a preference for compensating victims instead of punishing perpetrators in these situations. Though these studies have shown that people both compensate and punish, the question is what drives people to act prosocially in triadic situations? We have reason to believe that anger, which has hitherto been associated largely with third-party punishment (e.g., Fehr and Gächter 2002; Lotz et al. 2011b), can also motivate third-party prosocial acts. Both punishment of a perpetrator and compensation of a victim can act as a means to the end of restoring unjust or inequitable relations (e.g., Frijda 2004; Van Doorn et al. 2014). We believe that in interpersonal situations the general concern of anger, namely goal blockage (e.g., Berkowitz and Harmon-Jones 2004; Kuppens et al. 2003), translates into a concern for equity (e.g., Stillwell et al. 2008). This would imply that the behaviors following from anger are aimed at restoring equity. In first-party situations this is often done in an antagonistic manner; however, in third-party situations equity can also be restored in a prosocial manner.

Given that there are multiple ways to right certain wrongs in third-party situations, it is surprising that in experimental research punishment has often been the only option given to participants (e.g., Fehr and Fischbacher 2004; Fehr and Gächter 2002; Nelissen and Zeelenberg 2009). In the few examples in which the research included prosocial options, moral outrage (anger provoked by the perception that a moral standard has been violated; see Batson et al. 2007) correlated substantially with both participants’ assignment of perpetrator punishment and victim compensation (Darley and Pittman 2003; Lotz et al. 2011a, b). In a similar vein, Vitaglione and Barnett (2003) found that empathic anger was positively related to both helping a victim and punishing a perpetrator; Montada and Schneider (1989) and Wakslak et al. (2007) found that moral outrage correlates with prosocial activities such as donating money, signing petitions, and supporting social projects in favor of the disadvantaged; and Iyer et al. (2007) suggested that anger aimed at the ingroup predicted compensation to an outgroup. Although all these findings are suggestive of a relationship between third-party anger and prosocial behavior, none of these studies included manipulations of anger. It is important to identify causal effects in order to predict (prosocial) behavior stemming from anger. On the basis of the findings by Lotz et al. (2011b), we might even expect angry people to prefer victim compensation over punishment of a perpetrator as a way of restoring equity. In compensation, the victim is helped out of his/her disadvantageous position; punishing the perpetrator may also restore justice, but this does not take away the harm done to the victim. Thus, compensation of a victim seems to be a more positive approach. Moreover, victim compensation is consistent with the do-no-harm principle (Baron 1995).

We further expect compensation to be a direct result of the anger, which is independent from the empathic concerns that may be triggered simultaneously (Leliveld et al. 2012). Some initial support for this expectation can already be found in the experiment by Lotz et al. (2011b), who found that visibility mattered for empathy: the goal of empathy is to comfort someone, but if the victim does not know about the unfair allocation there is no one to comfort. Visibility, however, did not matter for anger, which correlated with the restoration of injustice in all cases. According to Blader and Tyler (2002), justice theory suggests that we feel concerned even when a loathsome person for whom we feel little empathy is the victim of injustice. Although anger was not explicitly mentioned or examined in this relationship, the emotion appraisal literature shows that injustice is indeed an important elicitor of anger (Mikula et al. 1998). Montada and Schneider (1989) even showed that moral outrage was a stronger predictor for prosocial behavior than sympathy, a construct very much related to empathy (Eisenberg and Fabes 1990). Thus, the effects of anger and empathy on compensation are expected to be independent of one another.

In the anger literature one finds several terms referring to anger stemming from outcomes that are not for oneself. We use the term third-party anger as an umbrella term for all these forms of anger. For example, Batson et al. (2007) differentiate between moral outrage (anger provoked by the perception that a moral standard has been violated), personal anger (anger one might feel when one’s own interests are thwarted), and empathic anger (when interests of the cared-for other have been thwarted). First-party anger is what Batson et al. would call personal anger, and third-party anger is what they would call empathic anger when it concerns cared-for others such as friends, and moral outrage when it concerns strangers. As argued before, we do not believe that the experiences of anger are different between first-party or third-party anger, but rather its behavioral consequences are because the specific situations allow for different solutions. Studies that did concern behavioral consequences of moral outrage (O’Mara et al. 2011; Montada and Schneider 1989; Wakslak et al. 2007) or empathic anger (Vitaglione and Barnett 2003) all involved situations that we would call third-party anger situations.

We report here three studies using different methods to investigate the behavioral consequences of third-party anger. All methods have proven to be useful for studying emotions and their consequences in previous research. Of course, each method on its own has its idiosyncratic strengths and weaknesses. As a set, though, we suggest that these different methodologies inform us about the potential prosocial consequences of anger. Study 1 provided a first experimental test of whether experiences of anger (via an autobiographical recall) spillover to prosocial behavior in a third-party situation. This study shows that activating anger increases willingness to compensate a victim of unfairness, and that angry people are willing to compensate more than to punish. This study also shows that these effects are independent of trait anger and trait empathy. Study 2 extended this finding by illustrating that angry participants preferred compensation to punishment when forced to choose between the two responses. Finally, Study 3 employs an economic game with real payoffs attached to provide a direct measure of behavior. The results suggest that unfairness triggers anger, which causes third-party interventions despite a direct cost to decision makers.

We examined prosocial consequences of third-party anger. In Study 1, we found that autobiographical recalls of anger spill over to new situations and cause participants to act more prosocially in triadic situations. Interestingly, these effects could not be explained by trait anger and trait empathy. Study 2 elaborated on that and revealed that people angry about a triadic situation of inequity prefer compensation of a victim to punishment of a perpetrator. Finally, Study 3 provides behavioral evidence that people are willing to give up money in order to compensate others, who have been unfairly treated. This willingness was correlated with experiences of anger elicited by this unfair treatment.

These findings add to the existing literature in that they are the first to show when anger motivates people to compensate or act prosocially towards the victim. We think that these prosocial consequences of anger have been overlooked in previous studies on the negative consequences of anger because these focused on dyadic situations where the participant is the victim. Only in triadic situations when a person observes an inequity can we observe prosocial behavior following from anger. When people themselves are victims of inequity, we primarily see antagonistic behavior because there is simply no victim to be compensated (unless one could compensate oneself). An additional reason for having overlooked prosocial consequences of anger could be the dominant theoretical focus on negative consequences of anger, most notably punishment. Previous studies that did look at positive or prosocial effects of anger were mainly correlational in nature, were inconsistent in the operationalization of anger (e.g., Iyer et al. 2007; Montada and Schneider 1989; Wakslak et al. 2007), lacked a simultaneous measure of both compensatory and punitive measures (as in third-party punishment studies), or the compensatory and punitive measures were not costly (e.g., Adams and Mullen 2014). Finally, studies that did include positive consequences typically did not directly measure situational, state anger. For example, Leliveld et al. (2012) and Prooijen (2010) looked at prosocial consequences after injustice but did not include a measurement of anger. Deffenbacher et al. (1996) showed a positive correlation between trait anger and aggressive consequences, and Vitaglione and Barnett (2003) showed that there was no direct relation between trait empathic anger and helping or punishing. As has been shown for other emotions, such as shame, trait measures tend to yield different results than state measures of emotion (e.g., De Hooge et al. 2008). Effect of trait anger show what people do who are easily angered or who experience anger often. Effects of state anger show what people do who are actually angry about a specific situation.

By showing that anger has prosocial consequences we do not propose that anger is a prosocial emotion, neither do we suggest that there are two different forms of anger, or that anger leads to a general tendency to act prosocial to anyone or in every situation. Instead, we merely argue that there are situational distinctions in the experience of anger allowing for certain behaviors to emerge. Prosocial behavior can only emerge when there is room for compensatory behavior towards the victim and not only punitive behavior towards the perpetrator (as reflected in the difference between triadic situations and dyadic situations). Furthermore, as discussed previously and revealed in our studies, the positive effects of anger cannot be explained by simultaneous experiences of trait empathic concern. One could argue that state empathic concern might influence prosocial consequences above and beyond state anger. However, if so we would predict more compensation in the control condition of Study 1 as well, which was not the case.

In addition to finding a direct relation between anger and prosocial behavior, we also found that angry people prefer compensation to punishment. Compensation could be seen as a more efficient form of restoring equity than punishment is, as it allows for getting the victim out of its disadvantageous position. Punishment, on the other hand, only lowers the perpetrator’s position to that of the victim, but does not do anything for the victim. However, there is also a possibility that people prefer compensation to punishment due to relational concerns. In contrast to punishment, compensation allows for investing in a relationship with the victim. Future research might reveal the exact motivation behind this preference.

Taken together, we sought to comprehend the behavioral effects of anger, and how situational factors decide why anger leads to antagonistic behavior towards the perpetrator or prosocial behavior towards the victim. These studies suggest that the behaviors stemming from anger, be it antagonistic or prosocial, are a situation-specific reaction to inequity.