Rejection of unfair offers can be driven by negative emotions, evidence from modified ultimatum games with anonymity

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.

The fair decision-making of children and adolescents with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder from the perspective of dual-process theories

BACKGROUND

Fairness has received much attention in our society. At present, the findings regarding fair decision-making in high-functioning autism spectrum disorder (HF-ASD) are inconsistent. Previous studies have shown that the fair decision-making of typically developing children is influenced by theory of mind (ToM) and executive functioning (EF). As those with HF-ASD have defects in both domains, this study aims to explore the differences in fair decision-making between children and adolescents with HF-ASD and those with typical development (TD).

METHODS

We used a simple ultimatum game (UG) to explore 31 children and adolescents with HF-ASD and 38 children and adolescents with TD. T tests and chi-square tests were used to compare group differences, and Pearson correlation analysis and stepwise regression analysis were used to analyse the mechanisms influencing the two groups' unfair acceptance rates.

RESULTS

The results show that children with HF-ASD are more likely to accept unfair offers, but for adolescents, the difference is not significant. Regression analysis showed that the interaction between the behavior regulation index (BRI) and age could negatively predict the unfair acceptance rate of children and adolescents with HF-ASD. Working memory and ToM can negatively predict the unfair acceptance rate of those with TD.

CONCLUSION

This study concluded that the development of fair decision-making by children and adolescents with HF-ASD falls far behind that of those with TD. Intuition processes play a dominant role in the fair decision-making processes of children and adolescents with HF-ASD, and we believe that comorbidity, age, experience and emotional management are important factors influencing the fair decision-making of individuals with HF-ASD.

Fairness, fast and slow: A review of dual process models of fairness

Fairness, the notion that people deserve or have rights to certain resources or kinds of treatment, is a fundamental dimension of moral cognition. Drawing on recent evidence from economics, psychology, and neuroscience, we ask whether self-interest is always intuitive, requiring self-control to override with reasoning-based fairness concerns, or whether fairness itself can be intuitive. While we find strong support for rejecting the notion that self-interest is always intuitive, the literature has reached conflicting conclusions about the neurocognitive systems underpinning fairness. We propose that this disagreement can largely be resolved in light of an extended Social Heuristics Hypothesis. Divergent findings may be attributed to the interpretation of behavioral effects of ego depletion or neurostimulation, reverse inference from brain activity to the underlying psychological process, and insensitivity to social context and inter-individual differences. To better dissect the neurobiological basis of fairness, we outline how future research should embrace cross-disciplinary methods that combine psychological manipulations with neuroimaging, and that can probe inter-individual, and cultural heterogeneities.

Power to Punish Norm Violations Affects the Neural Processes of Fairness-Related Decision Making

Punishing norm violations is considered an important motive during rejection of unfair offers in the ultimatum game (UG). The present study investigates the impact of the power to punish norm violations on people's responses to unfairness and associated neural correlates. In the UG condition participants had the power to punish norm violations, while an alternate condition, the impunity game (IG), was presented where participants had no power to punish norm violations since rejection only reduced the responder's income to zero. Results showed that unfair offers were rejected more often in UG compared to IG. At the neural level, anterior insula and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex were more active when participants received and rejected unfair offers in both UG and IG. Moreover, greater dorsolateral prefrontal cortex activity was observed when participants rejected than accepted unfair offers in UG but not in IG. Ventromedial prefrontal cortex activation was higher in UG than IG when unfair offers were accepted as well as when rejecting unfair offers in IG as opposed to UG. Taken together, our results demonstrate that the power to punish norm violations affects not only people's behavioral responses to unfairness but also the neural correlates of the fairness-related social decision-making process.

Costly retaliation is promoted by threats to resources in women and threats to status in men

What motivates people to act against their own self-interest? In men, what seems to be irrational decision-making in the short-term may be explained by other long-term benefits; thus retaliation may not be motivated by tangible costs, but instead intangible psychological variables (e.g., status threats). In contrast, there is evidence that women are more sensitive to tangible costs than are men. In Experiment 1, using the Point Subtraction Aggression Paradigm (PSAP), we tested the prediction that in men, the frequency of provocation, and not the monetary loss (tangible cost), would be associated with retaliation, whereas women would be sensitive to the tangible costs. In keeping with the prediction, women (n = 80) who incurred greater tangible costs (irrespective of frequency) retaliated with more costly punishment, whereas men (n = 90) who were provoked more frequently (irrespective of tangible costs) retaliated with more costly punishment. In Experiment 2, we directly investigated whether women were more sensitive to threats to resources and men were more sensitive to threats to status, as suggested by the results of Experiment 1. Women's (n = 53) retaliation was greater when they reported it to be a means to protect their resources, and men's (n = 35) retaliation was greater when they reported it to be a means to protect their status. Thus, these results identify psychological variables that guide retaliation that is costly to the actor. Consistent with evolutionary perspectives, concerns about status appear to drive costly retaliatory behavior more so in men than in women.

The Role of Interpersonal Traits in Social Decision Making

Economic games are well-established experimental paradigms for modeling social decision making. A large body of literature has pointed to the heterogeneity of behavior within many of these games, which might be partly explained by broad interpersonal trait dispositions. Using the Big Five and HEXACO (Honesty-Humility, Emotionality, eXtraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Openness to Experience) personality frameworks, we review the role of personality in two main classes of economic games: social dilemmas and bargaining games. This reveals an emerging role for Big Five agreeableness in promoting cooperative, egalitarian, and altruistic behaviors across several games, consistent with its core characteristic of maintaining harmonious interpersonal relations. The role for extraversion is less clear, which may reflect the divergent effects of its underlying agentic and affiliative motivational components. In addition, HEXACO honesty-humility and agreeableness may capture distinct aspects of prosocial behavior outside the bounds of the Five-Factor Model. Important considerations and directions for future studies are discussed within the emerging personality–economics interface.

When do people cooperate? The neuroeconomics of prosocial decision making

Understanding the roots of prosocial behavior is an interdisciplinary research endeavor that has generated an abundance of empirical data across many disciplines. This review integrates research findings from different fields into a novel theoretical framework that can account for when prosocial behavior is likely to occur. Specifically, we propose that the motivation to cooperate (or not), generated by the reward system in the brain (extending from the striatum to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex), is modulated by two neural networks: a cognitive control system (centered on the lateral prefrontal cortex) that processes extrinsic cooperative incentives, and/or a social cognition system (including the temporo-parietal junction, the medial prefrontal cortex and the amygdala) that processes trust and/or threat signals. The independent modulatory influence of incentives and trust on the decision to cooperate is substantiated by a growing body of neuroimaging data and reconciles the apparent paradox between economic versus social rationality in the literature, suggesting that we are in fact wired for both. Furthermore, the theoretical framework can account for substantial behavioral heterogeneity in prosocial behavior. Based on the existing data, we postulate that self-regarding individuals (who are more likely to adopt an economically rational strategy) are more responsive to extrinsic cooperative incentives and therefore rely relatively more on cognitive control to make (un)cooperative decisions, whereas other-regarding individuals (who are more likely to adopt a socially rational strategy) are more sensitive to trust signals to avoid betrayal and recruit relatively more brain activity in the social cognition system. Several additional hypotheses with respect to the neural roots of social preferences are derived from the model and suggested for future research.