scholarly journals Social Value Orientation Modulates Fairness Processing During Social Decision-Making: Evidence From Behavior and Brain Potentials

Author(s):  
Xinmu Hu ◽  
Xiaoqin Mai

Abstract 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.

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erdem Pulcu ◽  
Masahiko Haruno

AbstractInteracting with others to decide how finite resources should be allocated between parties which may have competing interests is an important part of social life. Considering that not all of our proposals to others are always accepted, the outcomes of such social interactions are, by their nature, probabilistic and risky. Here, we highlight cognitive processes related to value computations in human social interactions, based on mathematical modelling of the proposer behavior in the Ultimatum Game. Our results suggest that the perception of risk is an overarching process across non-social and social decision-making, whereas nonlinear weighting of others’ acceptance probabilities is unique to social interactions in which others’ valuation processes needs to be inferred. Despite the complexity of social decision-making, human participants make near-optimal decisions by dynamically adjusting their decision parameters to the changing social value orientation of their opponents through influence by multidimensional inferences they make about those opponents (e.g. how prosocial they think their opponent is relative to themselves).


2014 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhen ZHANG ◽  
Fan ZHANG ◽  
Liang HUANG ◽  
Bo YUAN ◽  
Yiwen WANG

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hernando Santamaría-García ◽  
Jorge Martínez Cotrina ◽  
Nicolas Florez Torres ◽  
Carlos Buitrago ◽  
Diego Mauricio Aponte-Canencio ◽  
...  

AbstractAchieving justice could be considered a complex social decision-making scenario. Despite the relevance of social decisions for legal contexts, these processes have still not been explored for individuals who work as criminal judges dispensing justice. To bridge the gap, we used a complex social decision-making task (Ultimatum game) and tracked a heart rate variability measurement: the square root of the mean squared differences of successive NN intervals (RMSSD) at their baseline (as an implicit measurement that tracks emotion regulation behavior) for criminal judges (n = 24) and a control group (n = 27). Our results revealed that, compared to controls, judges were slower and rejected a bigger proportion of unfair offers. Moreover, the rate of rejections and the reaction times were predicted by higher RMSSD scores for the judges. This study provides evidence about the impact of legal background and expertise in complex social decision-making. Our results contribute to understanding how expertise can shape criminal judges’ social behaviors and pave the way for promising new research into the cognitive and physiological factors associated with social decision-making.


Author(s):  
Katarina Kuss ◽  
Armin Falk ◽  
Peter Trautner ◽  
Christian Montag ◽  
Bernd Weber ◽  
...  

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maik Bieleke ◽  
Peter M Gollwitzer ◽  
Gabriele Oettingen ◽  
Urs Fischbacher

We investigated whether social value orientation (SVO) moderates the effects of intuitive versus reflective information processing on responses to unfair offers. We measured SVO one week prior to an ultimatum game experiment in which participants had to accept or reject a series of 10 ultimatum offers including very low (unfair) ones. Before making these decisions, participants mentally contrasted their individual goals with the obstacle of pondering at length or acting in a hasty way; then they made the plan to adopt an intuitive or a reflective mode of processing (intuitive and reflective condition, respectively), or made no such plans (control condition). Participants with rather high (prosocial) SVO scores were more likely to accept unfair offers in the reflective than the intuitive condition. This effect also evinced for a subset of selfish individuals; however, the majority with rather low (selfish) scores made similar decisions in both conditions. This pattern of results suggests that SVO moderates the effects of intuitive versus reflective modes of processing on responses to low ultimatum offers.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie Tulk ◽  
Eva Wiese

As humanoid robots become more advanced and commonplace, the average user may find themselves in the position of wondering if their robotic companion truly possesses a mind. It is important for scientists and designers to consider how this will likely affect our interactions with social robots. The current paper explores how social decision making with humanoid robots changes as the degree of their human-likeness changes. For that purpose, we created a spectrum of human-like agents via morphing that ranged from very robot-like to very human-like in physical appearance (in increments of 20%) and measured how this change in physical humanness affected decision-making in two economic games: Ultimatum Game (Experiment 1) and Trust Game (Experiment 2). We expected increases in human-like appearance to lead to a higher rate of punishment for unfair offers in the Ultimatum Game, and to a higher rate of trust in the Trust Game. While physical humanness did not have an impact on economic decisions in either of the experiments, follow-up analyses showed that both subjective ratings of trust and agent approachability mediated the effect of agent appearance on decision-making in both experiments. Possible consequences of these findings for human- robot interactions are discussed.


2012 ◽  
Vol 38 (10) ◽  
pp. 1247-1258 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan-Willem van Prooijen ◽  
Tomas Ståhl ◽  
Daniel Eek ◽  
Paul A. M. van Lange

In two experiments, the authors investigated how differences in social value orientation predict evaluations of procedures that were accorded to self and others. Proselfs versus prosocials were either granted or denied an opportunity to voice an opinion in a decision-making process and witnessed how someone else was either granted or denied such an opportunity. Consistent with the hypothesis, procedural evaluations of both proselfs and prosocials were influenced by own procedure when other was granted voice, but only proselfs were influenced by own procedure when other was denied voice. These findings were particularly attributable to prosocials’ tendency to evaluate a situation where no-voice procedures are applied consistently between persons more positively than proselfs. It is concluded that proselfs are focused on procedural justice and injustice for self more than prosocials, whereas prosocials value equality in procedures more than proselfs—even when equality implies injustice for all.


2008 ◽  
Vol 44 (5) ◽  
pp. 1303-1315 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan-Willem van Prooijen ◽  
David De Cremer ◽  
Ilja van Beest ◽  
Tomas Ståhl ◽  
Marius van Dijke ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yixin Hu ◽  
Mengmeng Zhou ◽  
Yunru Shao ◽  
Jing Wei ◽  
Zhenying Li ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Based on social comparison theory, two experiments were conducted to explore the effects of depression and social comparison on adolescents, using the ultimatum game (UG). Methods Before the formal experiment began, a preliminary experiment tested the effectiveness of social comparison settings. This study used the UG paradigm to explore adolescents’ social decision-making in the context of gain and loss through two experiments. These experiments were designed as a 2 (group: depressive mood group, normal mood group) × 2 (social comparison: upward, downward) × 3 (fairness level: fair 5:5, unfair 3:7, extremely unfair 1:9) three-factor hybrid study. Results (1) The fairer the proposal was, the higher the sense of fairness participants felt, and the higher their acceptance rate. (2) The acceptance rate of the participants for downward social comparison was significantly higher than that for upward social comparison, but there was no difference in fairness perception between the two social comparisons. (3) Under the context of gain, the acceptance rate of the depressive mood group was higher than that of the normal mood group, but there was no difference in the acceptance rate between the depressive mood group and the normal mood group under the loss context. Depressive mood participants had more feelings of unfairness in the contexts of both gain and loss. (4) The effects of depressive mood, social comparison and the fairness level of distribution on social decision-making interact. Conclusions The interaction of social comparison, depressive mood and proposal type demonstrates that besides one’s emotion, cognitive biases and social factors can also have an effect on social decision-making. These findings indicate that behavioral decision boosting may provide an avenue for appropriate interventions in helping to guide adolescents to make social decisions.


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