ArticleFrontiers in psychology2026
When resources run short: the inhibitory effect of economic scarcity on third-party punishment.
Article in Frontiers in psychology, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
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Abstract
This study investigates how economic scarcity influences third-party punishment, a costly and non-self-interested behavior that plays a critical role in maintaining social norms and cooperation. In real-world contexts, individuals often operate under resource constraints that may systematically alter their cost-benefit calculations; however, it remains unclear whether and how scarcity affects the willingness to punish unfairness. Across two experiments, we examined whether scarcity reduces individuals' propensity to engage in third-party punishment. Experiment 1, involving 70 participants, showed that individuals under scarcity allocated significantly fewer resources to sanction unfair dictators than those in a control condition. Experiment 2, with 41 participants, replicated this design across two time points separated by 2 months. The results further confirmed the suppressing effect of scarcity on punishment and demonstrated a similar pattern of results across time points. These findings offer important theoretical and practical implications for promoting cooperation and effective norm enforcement under resource-limited conditions.
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