Distributive fairness during the transition to adolescence: The role of peer comparison and social value orientation

Combining the dictator game (DG) and the ultimatum game (UG), this study recruited 546 Chinese children (321 boys, aged 9-12 years) as distributors, and found that both peer comparison and social value orientation (SVO) significantly influenced children's distributive fairness from late childhood to early adolescence. Results showed that as the unfairness of peer proposals increased, participants decreased the amount of gold coins distributed to the receiver in both tasks, revealing a peer comparison effect. This effect was more pronounced for adolescents than for children in both tasks. In addition, participants' fair distribution behaviors in the DG showed a three-way interaction effect of SVO, grade, and peer comparison. Specifically, for proselfs, children were not influenced by peers and consistently proposed self-interested distributions, whereas adolescents exhibited a peer comparison effect; for prosocials, both children and adolescents were influenced by peers, but children decreased the amount of their distributions only when they saw peers make extremely unfair distributions, whereas adolescents decreased the amount of their distributions when they saw peers make both mildly and extremely unfair distributions. This study highlights the importance of social environment and personal trait in shaping children's fair distribution behavior during the transition from late childhood to early adolescence.

Social status mediates the propagation of unfairness

Fairness constitutes a cornerstone of social norms, emphasizing equal treatment and equitable distribution in interpersonal relationships. Unfair treatment often leads to direct responses and can spread to others through a phenomenon known as pay-it-forward (PIF) reciprocity. This study examined how unfairness spreads in interactions with new partners who have higher, equal, or lower status than the participants. In the present study, participants (N = 47, all Korean) were given either fair or unfair treatment in the first round of a dictator game. They then allocated monetary resources among partners positioned at various hierarchical levels in the second round. Our main goal was to determine if the severity of inequity inflicted on new partners was influenced by their hierarchical status. The results revealed an inclination among participants to act more generously towards partners of higher ranking despite prior instances of unfair treatment, whereas a tendency for harsher treatment was directed towards those with lower ranking. The interaction between the fairness in the first round (DG1) and the hierarchical status of the partner in the second round (DG2) was significant, indicating that the effect of previous fairness on decision-making differed depending on the ranking of the new partners. This study, therefore, validates the presence of unfairness PIF reciprocity within hierarchical contexts.

Context Modulates Perceived Fairness in Altruistic Punishment: Neural Signatures from ERPs and EEG Oscillations

Social norms and altruistic punitive behaviours are both based on the integration of information from multiple contexts. Individual behavioural performance can be altered by loss and gain contexts, which produce different mental states and subjective perceptions. In this study, we used event-related potential and time-frequency techniques to examine performance on a third-party punishment task and to explore the neural mechanisms underlying context-dependent differences in punishment decisions. The results indicated that individuals were more likely to reject unfairness in the context of loss (vs. gain) and to increase punishment as unfairness increased. In contrast, fairness appeared to cause an early increase in cognitive control signal enhancement, as indicated by the P2 amplitude and theta oscillations, and a later increase in emotional and motivational salience during decision-making in gain vs. loss contexts, as indicated by the medial frontal negativity and beta oscillations. In summary, individuals were more willing to sanction violations of social norms in the loss context than in the gain context and rejecting unfair losses induced more equity-related cognitive conflict than accepting unfair gains, highlighting the importance of context (i.e., gain vs. loss) in equity-related social decision-making processes.

Time pressure and deliberation affect moral punishment

The deliberate-morality account implies that moral punishment should be decreased with time pressure and increased with deliberation while the intuitive-morality account predicts the opposite. In three experiments, moral punishment was examined in a simultaneous one-shot Prisoner's Dilemma game with a costly punishment option. The players cooperated or defected and then decided whether or not to punish their partners. In Experiment 1, the punishment decisions were made without or with time pressure. In Experiment 2, the punishment decisions were immediate or delayed by pauses in which participants deliberated their decisions. In Experiment 3, participants were asked to deliberate self-interest or fairness before deciding whether to punish their partners. Different types of punishment were distinguished using the cooperation-and-punishment model. In Experiment 1, time pressure decreased moral punishment. In Experiment 2, deliberation increased moral punishment. So far, the evidence supports the deliberate-morality account. Experiment 3 demonstrates that the effect of deliberation depends on what is deliberated. When participants deliberated self-interest rather than fairness, moral punishment was decreased. The results suggest that unguided deliberation increases moral punishment, but the effects of deliberation are modulated by the type of deliberation that takes place. These results strengthen a process-based account of punishment which offers a more nuanced understanding of the context-specific effect of deliberation on moral punishment than the deliberate-morality account.

Deliberately ignoring inequality to avoid rejecting unfair offers

Why do people punish experienced unfairness if it induces costs for both the punisher and punished person(s) without any direct material benefits for the punisher? Economic theories of fairness propose that punishers experience disutility from disadvantageous inequality and punish in order to establish equality in outcomes. We tested these theories in a modified Ultimatum Game (N = 1370) by examining whether people avoid the urge to reject unfair offers, and thereby punish the proposer, by deliberately blinding themselves to unfairness. We found that 53% of participants deliberately ignored whether they had received an unfair offer. Among these participants, only 6% of offers were rejected. As expected, participants who actively sought information rejected significantly more unfair offers (39%). Averaging these rejection rates to 21%, no significant difference to the rejection rate by participants who were directly informed about unfairness was found, contrary to our hypothesis. We interpret these findings as evidence for sorting behavior: People who punish experienced unfairness seek information about it, while those who do not punish deliberately ignore it.

Social preferences trump emotions in human responses to unfair offers

People commonly reject unfair offers even if this leaves them worse off. Some explain this as a rational response based on social preferences. Others argue that emotions override self-interest in the determination of rejection behavior. We conducted an experiment in which we measured responders' biophysical reactions (EEG and EMG) to fair and unfair offers. We measured biophysical trait anger using resting-state EEG (frontal alpha-asymmetry), state anger using facial expressions, offer expectancy processing using event-related EEG (medial-frontal negativity; MFN) and self-reported emotions. We systematically varied whether rejections led proposers to lose their share (Ultimatum Game; UG) or not (Impunity Game; IG). Results favor preference-based accounts: Impunity minimizes rejection despite increasing subjectively reported anger. Unfair offers evoke frowning responses, but frowning does not predict rejection. Prosocial responders reject unfair UG offers more often after unmet fairness expectations. These results suggest that responders do not reject unfairness out of anger. Rather, people seem motivated to reject unfair offers when they violate their behavioral code but only when rejection has payoff consequences for the proposer, allowing them to reciprocate and restore equity. Thus, social preferences trump emotions when responding to unfair offers.

Public's awareness of biobanks and willingness to participate in biobanking: the moderating role of social value orientation

Although the awareness of biobanks is considered to be a key factor in the willingness to participate in biobanking, the empirical evidence on their relationship is inconsistent. The present study investigated social value orientation as an explanatory factor in this relationship. A representative sample of 600 Slovaks completed Slider Measure to assess their social value orientation. Thereafter, they reported their level of awareness of biobanks and their willingness to provide biospecimens and personal information to biobanks. The results showed a positive relationship between awareness and willingness. Although social value orientation was not the moderator, we found that this relationship was significant only in the groups of altruists and individualists. The results remained robust after taking sociodemographic and institutional trust factors into account. Our findings imply that biobank awareness programmes should highlight both prosocial and proself motives to attract people with various social value orientations to participate in biobanking.

Intuitive thinking impedes cooperation by decreasing cooperative expectations for pro-self but not for pro-social individuals

This study conducted two experiments to explore the effects of intuitive thinking and social value orientation (SVO) on cooperative behavior and assess the mediating effect of cooperative expectations. It manipulated intuitive thinking by increasing the participants' need for cognitive closure, classified SVO using the triple-dominance measure, measured cooperative behavior using the prisoner's dilemma game, and considered cooperative expectations based on participants' assessments of the cooperativeness of their counterparts. Both experiments showed that intuitive thinking increased and decreased the cooperation of pro-social and pro-self individuals, respectively. In pro-self individuals, cooperative expectations mediated the effect of intuitive thinking on cooperation.

Leader Intuition: Good or Bad for Multiteam System Performance? The Roles of Information Load and Introversion

Some leaders tend to use their intuition to think and make decisions more than others do. This individual difference (i.e., an intuitive cognitive style) may have important implications for the collectives of people they lead. Unfortunately, scholars lack a clear understanding of the conditions under which intuition is effective, especially in the context of large and complex organizational structures such as multiteam systems (MTSs). We argue that the effects of leaders’ intuitive cognitive style on MTS performance depends on the amount of information load they face in their roles, as well as their level of introversion: a personality characteristic that is associated with an inward and reflective focus. Using a sample of 222 MTSs comprised of Captains in the United States Air Force, our study demonstrated that the intuitive cognitive style of leaders in high information load roles positively affected MTS performance, especially if they were high in introversion. In low information load roles, however, an intuitive cognitive style had a negative effect on MTS performance, especially for leaders low in introversion. We also argued and found that MTS coordination effectiveness played a key mediating role. Our study advances research in multiple areas of work, including intuition, MTSs, and leadership.

Empathy and teachers’ fairness behavior: The mediating role of moral obligation and moderating role of social value orientation

This study examined the mediating effect of moral obligation and moderating effect of social value orientation on the relationship between empathy and fairness behavior in Chinese teachers. Seven hundred and twenty-six Chinese teachers completed self-reported questionnaires regarding empathy, moral obligation, social value orientation, and fairness behavior. The results revealed that moral obligation mediated the link between empathy and teachers’ fairness behavior. Teachers’ social value orientation moderated the associations between empathy and moral obligation and moral obligation and fairness behavior. The associations between empathy and moral obligation and moral obligation and fairness behavior were more robust for those with high SVO scores (i.e., prosocial). This study identified the critical factors associated with teachers’ fairness behavior, supplying empirical support for existing theories and providing practical implications for interventions designed to improve Chinese teachers’ classroom environment.

Examining Consequentialist Punishment Motives in One-Shot Social Dilemmas

Abstract. We investigated whether consequentialist motives may underlie punishment decisions in single-round (i.e., one-shot) social dilemmas in which there is no prospect of reciprocity. In particular, we used an incentivized public goods game to examine how the prospect of receiving information on the effect of punishment (i.e., information that indicates potential regret and intention for future behavioral change on the part of the transgressor) affects people’s punishment decisions. We also took person-situation interactions into account and studied whether prosocial individuals (i.e., persons high in Honesty-Humility and Social Value Orientation) punish more strongly when they receive consequentialist information. The data did neither reveal the hypothesized effects of information availability on punishment decisions nor were these effects conditional on dispositional prosociality. We discuss potential limitations of these findings as well as open questions for future research.

Effects of Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation Over the Right Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex on Fairness-Related Decision-Making

Neuroimaging studies suggest that the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (rDLPFC) is an important brain area involved in fairness-related decision-making. In the present study, we used transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over the rDLPFC to investigate the effects of changed cortical excitability on fairness norm enforcement in social decision-making. Participants received anodal, cathodal, or sham stimulation before performing a modified ultimatum game (UG) task, in which participants were asked to accept or reject the proposer's offer and self-rate the intensity of their anger at offers on a 7-point scale. The results showed that the rejection rate of unfair offers and anger level were higher in the anodal compared to the sham and cathodal groups, and that the level of anger at unfair offers can predict the rejection rate. Furthermore, the fairness effect of RTs was more prominent in the anodal group than in the sham and cathodal groups. Our findings validate the causal role of the rDLPFC in fairness-related decision-making through tDCS, suggesting that strengthening the rDLPFC increases individuals' reciprocal fairness in social decision-making, both in subjective rating and behaviors.

The self-regulation of face touching - a preregistered experiment testing if-then plans as a means to promote COVID-19 prevention

Objective: Reducing face touching could help slow COVID-19's spread. We tested whether implementation intentions, a simple-to-use behaviour change intervention, reduce face-touching behaviour effectively.Design: In this pre-registered online study, we utilised a novel way to collect behavioural data during a pandemic. We obtained video recordings of 156 adults while performing three engaging tasks for four minutes each. After the baseline task, participants formed the goal to avoid touching their faces; some participants also formed implementation intentions, targeting either the frequency or duration of face touching.Main Outcome Measures: The 468 videos were rated by two independent raters for face touching frequency and duration.Results: Face touching was widespread. Compared to the baseline, there was a slight reduction in the frequency of face touching after the experimental manipulations. We observed a significant decrease in the length of face touching only for participants with duration-focused implementation intentions.Conclusion: While implementation intentions have effectively downregulated other unwanted behaviours, they did not reduce the frequency of face-touching behaviour. Still, duration-focused implementation intentions appear to be a promising strategy for face-touching behaviour change. This highlights the need for further optimisation and field research to test the effectiveness of implementation intentions in everyday life contexts.

Social value orientation modulates fairness processing during social decision-making: evidence from behavior and brain potentials

Social value orientation (SVO) characterizes stable individual differences by an inherent sense of fairness in outcome allocations. Using the event-related potential (ERP), this study investigated differences in fairness decision-making behavior and neural bases between individuals with prosocial and proself orientations using the Ultimatum Game (UG). Behavioral results indicated that prosocials were more prone to rejecting unfair offers with stronger negative emotional reactions compared with proselfs. ERP results revealed that prosocials showed a larger P2 when receiving fair offers than unfair ones in a very early processing stage, whereas such effect was absent in proselfs. In later processing stages, although both groups were sensitive to fairness as reflected by an enhanced medial frontal negativity (MFN) for unfair offers and a larger P3 for fair offers, prosocials exhibited a stronger fairness effect on these ERP components relative to proselfs. Furthermore, the fairness effect on the MFN mediated the SVO effect on rejecting unfair offers. Findings regarding emotional experiences, behavioral patterns and ERPs provide compelling evidence that SVO modulates fairness processing in social decision-making, whereas differences in neural responses to unfair vs fair offers as evidenced by the MFN appear to play important roles in the SVO effect on behavioral responses to unfairness.

Generosity in dictator game and social value orientation predicted the type of costly punishment in ultimatum game

The current study investigated two types of punishment (prosocial and proself punishment) in the ultimatum game (UG) and examined the impact of individuals' prosocial orientation on the costly punishment in the UG in a representative sample of Chinese undergraduate students (N = 344). The prosocial orientation was measured with individuals' performance in the dictator game (DG), social value orientation (SVO), and the personal norm of reciprocity. Prosocial and proself punishers were established with responses in advantage and disadvantage offers in the UG. Results showed that prosocial and proself punishers coexisted in the UG, and prosocial punishers were more likely to be prosocial in SVO and allocated more resources to the recipient in the DG than proself punishers, but differences in positive/negative reciprocity between prosocial and proself punishers were not found. Further regression analysis found that SVO type and generosity in the DG could predict the type of punishers in the UG, but not positive/negative reciprocity. These findings indicate that individuals rejecting unfair offers in the UG may be motivated by either prosocial motivation with strict fairness concern (prosocial punishment) or selfish motivation with maximizing self-interest concern (proself punishment). Moreover, SVO type and generosity in the DG might be effective measures to discriminate prosocial and proself punishers in the UG.

Deliberation decreases the likelihood of expressing dominant responses

Deliberation is commonly assumed to be a central characteristic of humans' higher cognitive functions, and the responses following deliberation are attributed to mechanisms that are qualitatively different from lower-level associative or affectively driven responses. In contrast to this perspective, the current article's aim is to draw attention to potential issues with making inferences about mechanisms of deliberation based on characteristics of the observed decision outcomes. We propose that a consequence of deliberation is to simply reduce the likelihood of expressing immediately available (dominant) responses. We illustrate how this consequence of deliberation can provide a parsimonious explanation for a broad range of prior research on decision-making. Furthermore, we discuss how the present perspective on deliberation relates to the question of how the cognitive system implements nondominant responses based on associative learning and affective prioritization rather than voluntary decisions. Beyond the present article's theoretical focus, for illustrative purposes, we provide some empirical evidence (three studies, N = 175) that is in line with our proposal. In sum, our theoretical framework, prior empirical evidence, and the present studies suggest that deliberation reduces the likelihood of expressing dominant responses. Although we do not argue that this is the only consequence or mechanism regarding deliberation, we aim to highlight that it is worthwhile considering this minimal consequence of deliberation as compared with certain higher cognitive functions in the interpretation of deliberation outcomes.

Emotion emphasis effects in moral judgment are moderated by mindsets

In two studies, emotion emphasis effects on moral judgment are demonstrated. The studies indicate that emphasizing negative consequences in trolley-type dilemmas with emotional language produces more utilitarian responses if such emphasis is on the consequences of the deontological option, and more deontological responses if it is on the consequences of the utilitarian option. This effect was moderated by action-phase related mindsets. Individuals in an implemental mindset were less susceptible to the emotion emphasis effect than individuals in a deliberative mindset (Studies 1, 2). By also using an eye-tracking task in Study 2, we demonstrated that our implemental mindset participants’ visual attention was more focused—in particular on goal-directed means—than that of the deliberative mindset participants.

Promoting the Self-Regulation of Stress in Health Care Providers: An Internet-Based Intervention

The aim of our internet-based intervention study was to find out whether healthcare professionals can autonomously down-regulate the stress they experience at their workplace, using an established self-regulation tool called Mental Contrasting with Implementation Intentions (MCII). Applying MCII to reduce stress implied for our participants to repeatedly engage in a mental exercise that (1) required specifying a wish related to reducing stress, (2) identifying and imagining its most desired positive outcome, (3) detecting and imagining the obstacle that holds them back, and (4) coming up with an if-then plan on how to overcome it. We recruited on-line nurses employed at various health institutions all over Germany, and randomly assigned participants to one of three groups. In the MCII group (n = 33), participants were taught how to use this exercise via email and the participants were asked to engage in the exercise on a daily basis for a period of 3 weeks. As compared to two control groups, one being a no-treatment control group (n = 35) and the other a modified MCII group (n = 32), our experimental MCII group showed a reduced stress level and an enhanced work engagement. We discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the present study as well as ways to intensify MCII effects on stress reduction.

Goal Achievement Failure Drives Corticospinal Modulation in Promotion and Prevention Contexts

When making decisions, people are typically differently sensitive to gains and losses according to the motivational context in which the choice is performed. As hypothesized by Regulatory Focus Theory (RFT), indeed, goals are supposed to change in relation to the set of possible outcomes. In particular, in a promotion context, the goal is achieving the maximal gain, whereas in a prevention context it turns into avoiding the greatest loss. We explored the neurophysiological counterpart of this phenomenon, by applying Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) and recording the motor evoked potentials (MEPs) in participants taking part in an economic game, in which they observed actions conveying different goal attainment levels, framed in different motivational contexts. More than the actual value of the economic exchange involved in the game, what affected motor cortex excitability was the goal attainment failure, corresponding to not achieving the maximal payoff in a promotion context and not avoiding the greatest snatch in a prevention context. Therefore, the results provide support for the key predictions of RFT, identifying a neural signature for the goal attainment failure.