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Expect the Worst! Expectations and Social Interactive Decision Making.

ABSTRACT: Psychological studies have demonstrated that expectations can have substantial effects on choice behavior, although the role of expectations on social decision making in particular has been relatively unexplored. To broaden our knowledge, we examined the role of expectations on decision making when interacting with new game partners and then also in a subsequent interaction with the same partners. To perform this, 38 participants played an Ultimatum Game (UG) in the role of responders and were primed to expect to play with two different groups of proposers, either those that were relatively fair (a tendency to propose an equal split-the high expectation condition) or unfair (with a history of offering unequal splits-the low expectation condition). After playing these 40 UG rounds, they then played 40 Dictator Games (DG) as allocator with the same set of partners. The results showed that expectations affect UG decisions, with a greater proportion of unfair offers rejected from the high as compared to the low expectation group, suggesting that players utilize specific expectations of social interaction as a behavioral reference point. Importantly, this was evident within subjects. Interestingly, we also demonstrated that these expectation effects carried over to the subsequent DG. Participants allocated more money to the recipients of the high expectation group as well to those who made equal offers and, in particular, when the latter were expected to behave unfairly, suggesting that people tend to forgive negative violations and appreciate and reward positive violations. Therefore, both the expectations of others' behavior and their violations play an important role in subsequent allocation decisions. Together, these two studies extend our knowledge of the role of expectations in social decision making.

SUBMITTER: Giorgetta C

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8145296 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:This study was interested in investigating the existence of a shared psychological mechanism for the processing of expectations across domains. The literature on music and language shows that violations of expectations produce similar neural responses and violating the expectation in one domain may influence the processing of stimuli in the other domain. Like music and language, our social world is governed by a system of inherent rules or norms, such as fairness. The study therefore aimed to draw a parallel to the social domain and investigate whether a manipulation of melodic expectation can influence the processing of higher-level expectations of fairness. Specifically, we aimed to investigate whether the presence of an unexpected melody enhances or reduces participants' sensitivity to the violations of fairness and the behavioural reactions associated with these. We embedded a manipulation of melodic expectation within a social decision-making paradigm, whereby musically expected and unexpected stimuli will be simultaneously presented with fair and unfair divisions in a third-party altruistic punishment game. Behavioural and electroencephalographic responses were recorded. Results from the pre-planned analyses show that participants are less likely to punish when melodies are more unexpected and that violations of fairness norms elicit medial frontal negativity (MFN)-life effects. Because no significant interactions between melodic expectancy and fairness of the division were found, results fail to provide evidence of a shared mechanism for the processing of expectations. Exploratory analyses show two additional effects: (i) unfair divisions elicit an early attentional component (P2), probably associated with stimulus saliency, and (ii) mid-value divisions elicit a late MFN-like component, probably reflecting stimulus ambiguity. Future studies could build on these results to further investigate the effect of the cross-domain influence of music on the processing of social stimuli on these early and late components.

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Expect the Worst! Expectations and Social Interactive Decision Making.

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