Overcoming Selfishness: Reciprocity, Inhibition, and Cardiac-Autonomic Control in the Ultimatum Game (original) (raw)
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Behavioral and neuronal determinants of negative reciprocity in the ultimatum game
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 2016
The rejection of unfair offers in the ultimatum game (UG) indicates negative reciprocity. The model of strong reciprocity claims that negative reciprocity reflects prosociality because the rejecting individual is sacrificing resources in order to punish unfair behavior. However, a recent study found that the rejection rate of unfair offers is linked to assertiveness (status defense model). To pursue the question what drives negative reciprocity, the present study investigated individual differences in the rejection of unfair offers along with their behavioral and neuronal determinants. We measured fairness preferences and event-related potentials (ERP) in 200 healthy participants playing a computerized version of the UG with pictures of unfair and fair proposers. Structural equation modeling (SEM) on the behavioral data corroborated both the strong reciprocity and the status defense models of human cooperation: Not only more prosocial but also more assertive individuals were more likely to show negative reciprocity by rejecting unfair offers. Experimental ERP results confirmed the feedback negativity (FN) as a neural signature of fairness processing. Multilevel SEM of brain-behavior relationships revealed that negative reciprocity was significantly associated with individual differences in FN amplitudes in response to proposers. Our results confirm stable individual differences in fairness processing at the behavioral and neuronal level.
2021
Event Related Potentials (ERPs) were recorded from 39 participants who played the role of Allocators in a Dictator Game (DG) and Responders in an Ultimatum Game (UG). Most participants expressed very low levels of altruistic decision making, and two homogeneous groups could be identified, one formed by fair (N = 10) individuals and another by selfish (N = 8) individuals. At fronto-central cortical sites, the ERP early negativity (N1) was reduced in selfish participants with a latency about 10 ms earlier than in fair participants. In fair DG players, the features of the subsequent positive wave P2 suggested that more cognitive resources were required when they allocated the least gains to the other party. P2 latency and amplitude in the selfish group supported the hypothesis that these participants tended to maximize their profit, as expected by a rational Homo economicus. During UG, we observed that a medial frontal negativity (MFN) occurred earlier and with greater amplitude when s...
Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 2012
It has been robustly demonstrated using the ultimatum game (UG) that individuals frequently reject unfair financial offers even if this results in a personal cost. One influential hypothesis for these rejections is that they reflect an emotional reaction to unfairness that overrides purely economic decision processes. In the present study, we examined whether the interplay between bodily responses, bodily regulation, and bodily perception ("interoception") contributes to emotionally driven rejection behavior on the UG. Offering support for bodily feedback theories, interoceptive accuracy moderated the relationship between changes in electrodermal activity to proposals and the behavioral rejection of such offers. Larger electrodermal responses to rejected relative to accepted offers predicted greater rejection in those with accurate interoception but were unrelated to rejection in those with poor interoception. Although cardiovascular responses during the offer period were unrelated to rejection rates, greater resting heart rate variability (linked to trait emotion regulation capacity) predicted reduced rejection rates of offers. These findings help clarify individual differences in reactions to perceived unfairness, support previous emotion regulation deficit accounts of rejection behavior, and suggest that the perception and regulation of bodily based emotional biasing signals ("gut feelings") partly shape financial decision making on the UG.
Heart beats and economic decisions: Observing mental stress in the ultimatum bargaining game
One aim of experimental economics is to try to better understand human economic decision making. Early research of the ultimatum bargaining game (Gueth et al., 1982) revealed that other motives than pure monetary reward play a role. Neuroeconomic research has introduced the recording of physiological observations as signals of emotional responses. In this study, we apply heart rate variability (HRV) measuring technology to explore the behaviour and physiological reactions of proposers and responders in the ultimatum bargaining game. Since this technology is small and non-intrusive, we are able to run the experiment in a standard experimental economic setup. We show that low offers by a proposer cause signs of mental stress in both the proposer and the responder, as both exhibit high ratios of low to high frequency activity in the HRV spectrum.
"Rejections of unfair offers in the Ultimatum Game are commonly assumed to reflect negative emotional arousal mediated by the anterior insula and medial prefrontal cortex (Sanfey et al., 2003; Koenigs & Tranel, 2007). We aimed to disentangle those neural mechanisms associated with direct personal involvement (“I have been treated unfairly”) from those associated with fairness considerations, such as the wish to discourage unfair behavior or social norm violations (“this person has been treated unfairly”). For this purpose, we used fMRI and asked participants to play the Ultimatum Game (UG) as responders either for themselves (Myself) or on behalf of another person (third-party, Civai et al., 2010). Unfair offers were equally often rejected in both conditions. Neuroimaging data revealed a dissociation between the medial prefrontal cortex, specifically associated with rejections in the Myself condition, thus confirming its role in self-related emotional responses, and the left anterior insula, associated with rejections in both Myself and Third-Party conditions, suggesting a role in promoting fair behavior also towards third-parties. Our data extend the current understanding of the neural substrate of social decision making, by disentangling the structures sensitive to direct emotional involvement of the self from those implicated in pure fairness considerations."
Reciprocity and emotions in bargaining using physiological and self-report measures
Journal of Economic Psychology, 2007
Although reciprocity is a key concept in the social sciences, it is still unclear why people engage in costly reciprocation. In this study, physiological and self-report measures were employed to investigate the role of emotions, using the Power-to-Take Game. In this two-person game, player 1 can claim any part of player 2's resources, and player 2 can react by destroying some (or all) of these resources thus preventing their transfer to player 1. Both physiological and self-report measures were related to destruction decisions. The observed pattern of emotional arousal and its correlation with self-reported anger provides support for using both techniques to study reciprocity.
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 2014
People expect to be treated equivalently as others in like circumstances. The present study investigated that whether and how equal or unequal treatments of others in like circumstances affected individuals responses to unfairness through justifying their reference points for fairness considerations. Twenty-five participants were scanned while they were playing an adapted version of the Ultimatum Game as responders. During the experiment, the participant was not only informed of the offer given by her/his proposer but also informed of the division scheme of another proposer-responder pair. It turned out that participants were more likely to accept unequal offers and reported higher fairness ratings when other responders received unequal offers compared with equal offers. Stronger bilateral anterior insula and dorsal anterior cingulate gyrus activities were observed when only participants (but not other responders) received equal offers, whereas greater right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex activity was found when both of them received unequal offers, especially when participants accepted the unequal offers. Taken together, the results demonstrated that whether others in like circumstances were offered equally also plays an important role in responders fairness-related social decision making.
Heart Rate Variability, the Autonomic Nervous System, and Neuroeconomic Experiments
2011
Measuring the activity of the autonomic nervous system may yield insights into individual stress levels. One small, nonintrusive instrument for collecting such data is a high-resolution heart rate monitor that allows measurement of heart rate variability (HRV). This complements brain-scanning methods and increases the number of participants that can be studied simultaneously. Combining HRV data with recorded data on the decisions made in experimental games throws light on how different individuals react in (economic) decision-making situations. This article therefore introduces the HRV measurement method and, using data from an ultimatum bargaining experiment in a laboratory environment, illustrates its application in experimental economic research.
Salivary alpha-amylase levels and rejection of unfair offers in the ultimatum game
Neuro endocrinology letters, 2009
This study aimed to examine the role of emotions in rejection of unfair offers in an ultimatum game, which is of interest in neuroeconomics of fairness. Thirty-seven participants played a one-shot ultimatum game as responders and decided whether to accept or reject the unfair offers by the proposers. Salivary alpha-amylase (sAA) was assessed before and after the ultimatum game. Forty-four percent of the participants rejected the unfair offers. While sAA levels of the participants who rejected the unfair offers increased between pre- and post-experiment, sAA levels of the participants who accepted the unfair offers remain unchanged. Emotional stress response was observed when participants rejected the unfair offers. Our results indicated that rejection of the unfair offers is a reflection of emotional arousal associated with adrenergic activations.
Affective state and decision-making in the Ultimatum Game
Experimental Brain Research, 2006
The emerging field of neuroeconomics has provided evidence that emotional as well as cognitive processes may contribute to economic decision-making. Indeed, activation of the anterior insula, a brain area involved in emotional processing, has been shown to predict decision-making in the Ultimatum Game. However, as the insula has also been implicated in other brain functions, converging evidence on the role of emotion in the Ultimatum Game is needed. In the present study, 30 healthy undergraduate students played the Ultimatum Game while their skin conductance responses were measured as an autonomic index of affective state. The results revealed that skin conductance activity was higher for unfair offers and was associated with the rejection of unfair offers in the Ultimatum Game. Interestingly, this pattern was only observed for offers proposed by human conspecifics, but not for offers generated by computers. This provides direct support for economic models that acknowledge the role of emotional brain systems in everyday decision-making.