Abstract
Previous studies have shown that ingroup/outgroup membership influences individual’s fairness considerations. However, it is not clear yet how group membership influences brain activity when a recipient evaluates the fairness of asset distribution. In this study, subjects participated as recipients in an Ultimatum Game with alleged members of both an experimentally induced ingroup and outgroup. They either received extremely unequal, moderately unequal, or equal offers from proposers while electroencephalogram was recorded. Behavioral results showed that the acceptance rates for unequal offers were higher when interacting with ingroup partners than with outgroup partners. Analyses of event related potentials revealed that proposers’ group membership modulated offer evaluation at earlier processing stages. Feedback-related negativity was more negative for extremely and moderately unequal offers compared to equal offers in the ingroup interaction whereas it did not show differential responses to different offers in the outgroup interaction. Analyses of event related oscillations revealed that the theta power (4–6 Hz) was larger for moderately unequal offers than equal offers in the ingroup interaction whereas it did not show differential responses to different offers in the outgroup interaction. Thus, early mechanisms of fairness evaluation are strongly modulated by the ingroup/outgroup membership of the interaction partner.
Highlights
Previous studies have shown that ingroup/outgroup membership influences individual’s fairness considerations
In our event-related potentials (ERP) analyses, we focused on two components which reflect different stages of outcome-processing, the feedback related negativity (FRN) and the P3
Simple-effect tests showed that acceptance rates to offer 1:9 were significantly higher when interacting with ingroup proposers compared to outgroup proposers, F(1,15) = 5.22, p = 0.037
Summary
Previous studies have shown that ingroup/outgroup membership influences individual’s fairness considerations. Subjects participated as recipients in an Ultimatum Game with alleged members of both an experimentally induced ingroup and outgroup They either received extremely unequal, moderately unequal, or equal offers from proposers while electroencephalogram was recorded. According to the Social Identity Theory, other researchers propose that an ingroup member’s unfair action will at least partially be compensated by the positive evaluation they gain through group membership[13,14]. As prior research has been broadly consistent with the Social Identity Theory, we predicted that acceptances rates should be higher when interacting with ingroup than with outgroup members
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