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Beauty matters: social preferences in a three-person ultimatum game.

ABSTRACT: Preference for beauty is human nature, as previous behavior studies have supported the notion of "beauty premium" in which attractive people were more easily to get promoted and receive higher salaries. In the present study, 29 males were recruited to participate in a three-person ultimatum game (UG) including a proposer, a responder and a powerless third player. Each subject, playing as the responder, had to decide whether to accept an offer from the allocator both for himself and a female third person. We aimed to elucidate how the facial attractiveness of the female subject affected the male subjects' fairness and decision-making in social exchanges. Frontal feedback-related negativity (FRN) in response to four offers in an attractive-face condition revealed no significant differences between offers; however, when the companion was an unattractive female, an "unfair/fair" offer, which assigned a lower share to the responder and a fair share to the third player, elicited the largest FRN. Furthermore, when the third player was offered the smallest amount ("fair/unfair" offer), a larger FRN was generated in an attractive-face condition than unattractive-face condition. In the "unfair/fair" offer condition in which subjects received a smaller allocation than the third person, the beauty of their female counterparts attenuated subjects' aversion to inequality, resulting in a less negative FRN in the frontal region and an increased acceptance ratio. However, the influence of the third player's facial attractiveness only affected the early evaluation stage: late P300 was found to be immune to the "beauty premium". Under the two face conditions, P300 was smallest following an "unfair/fair" offer, whereas the amplitudes in the other three offer conditions exhibited no significant differences. In addition, the differentiated neural features of processing facial attractiveness were also determined and indexed by four event-related potentials (ERP) components: N170, frontal N1, N2 and late positive potentials (LPPs).

SUBMITTER: Ma Q

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4423917 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:Participants in the Ultimatum Game will often reject unfair resource allocations at personal cost, reflecting a trade-off between financial gain and maintenance of social standing. Although this rejection behavior is linked to executive control, the exact role of cognitive regulation in relation to status cues is unclear. We propose that the salience of status cues affects how cognitive regulation resolves the conflict between financial gain and social status considerations. Situations that tax executive control by limiting available cognitive resources should increase acceptance rates for unfair offers, particularly when the conflict between economic self-interest and social reputation is high. Here, participants rated their own subjective social status, and then either mentally counted (Load) or ignored (No Load) simultaneously-presented tones while playing two rounds of the Ultimatum Game with an online (sham) "Proposer" of either high or low social status. A logistic regression revealed an interaction of Proposer status with cognitive load. Compared to the No Load group, the Load group showed higher acceptance rates for unfair offers from the high-status Proposer. In contrast, cognitive load did not influence acceptance rates for unfair offers from the low-status Proposer. Additionally, Proposer status interacted with the relative social distance between participant and Proposer. Participants close in social distance to the high-status Proposer were more likely to accept the unfair offer than those farther in social distance, whereas the opposite pattern was observed for offers from the low-status Proposer. Although rejection of unfair offers in the Ultimatum Game has previously been conceptualized as an intuitive response, these results instead suggest it reflects a deliberative strategy, dependent on cognitive resources, to prioritize social standing over short-term financial gain. This study reveals the dynamic interplay of cognitive resources and status concerns within this paradigm, providing new insights into when and why people reject inequitable divisions of resources.

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Beauty matters: social preferences in a three-person ultimatum game.

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