Humor Affects Fairness Considerations in the Gain and Loss Contexts.

Zhong Yang,Ya Zheng,Yue Qi,Di Fu,Qi Li,Xun Liu

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02679

Abstract

Human decision-making behaviors in social contexts are largely driven by fairness considerations. The dual-process model suggests that in addition to cognitive processes, emotion contributes to economic decision-making. Although humor, as an effective emotional regulation strategy to induce positive emotion, may influence an individual’s emotional state and decision-making behavior, previous studies have not examined how humor modulates fairness-related responses in the gain and loss contexts simultaneously. This study uses the Ultimatum Game (UG) in gain and loss contexts to explore this issue. The results show, in the gain context, viewing humorous pictures compared to humorless pictures increased acceptance rates and this effect was moderated by the offer size. However, we did not find the same effect in the loss context. These findings indicate that humor’s affection for fairness considerations may depend on the context and provide insight into the finite power of humor in human sociality, cooperation and norm compliance.

Highlights

Since ancient times, human behaviors in social contexts have been largely driven by fairness considerations
We investigated whether positive emotion induced by humor could affect fairness-related decision-making in gain and loss contexts
Rejection rates were a function of the fairness of the offer; that is, people would be more likely to reject the offer if the offer was more unfair in both the gain and loss contexts (Zhou and Wu, 2011)

Summary

Introduction

Human behaviors in social contexts have been largely driven by fairness considerations. An increasing number of studies have used the Ultimatum Game (UG) to illustrate the influence of fairness on decision-making (Güth et al, 1982) In this game, two players split a sum of money. If the offer is accepted, the money is split as proposed; if the responder rejects the offer, both players receive nothing. Previous UG studies have found that unfair offers, especially offers below 20% of the total, are rejected by many responders (Henrich et al, 2001; Sanfey et al, 2003). These findings cannot be captured by standard economic

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Conclusion