Low social status decreases the neural salience of unfairness.

Jie Hu,Philip R Blue,Yuan Cao,Xiaolin Zhou

doi:10.3389/fnbeh.2014.00402

Jie Hu, Philip R Blue + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2014.00402

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Abstract

Social hierarchy exists in almost all social species and affects everything from resource allocation to the development of intelligence. Previous studies showed that status within a social hierarchy influences the perceived fairness of income allocation. However, the effect of one’s social status on economic decisions is far from clear, as are the neural processes underlying these decisions. In this study, we dynamically manipulated participants’ social status and analyzed their behavior as recipients in the ultimatum game (UG), during which event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded. Behavioral results showed that acceptance rates for offers increased with the fairness level of offers. Importantly, participants were less likely to accept unfair offers when they were endowed with high status than with low status. In addition, cues indicating low status elicited a more positive P2 than cues indicating high status in an earlier time window (170–240 ms), and cues indicating high status elicited a more negative N400 than cues indicating low status in a later time window (350–520 ms). During the actual reception of offers, the late positivity potential (LPP, 400–700 ms) for unfair offers was more positive in the high status condition than in the low status condition, suggesting a decreased arousal for unfair offers during low status. These findings suggest a strong role of social status in modulating individual behavioral and neural responses to fairness.

Highlights

Fairness is an essential social norm in interpersonal interaction (Fehr and Fischbacher, 2003)
The main effect of social status was significant, F(1,25) = 5.21, p < 0.05, ηp2artial = 0.17, indicating that the overall acceptance rate was higher when the participants were endowed with low status (0.59 ± 0.04) than high status (0.55 ± 0.04)
When the participants were in high status, the LPP for fair and unfair offers was more positive than for sub-fair offers; when the participants were in low status, the LPP for fair offers was more positive than for either sub-fair or unfair offers, which did not differ from each other

Summary

Introduction

Fairness is an essential social norm in interpersonal interaction (Fehr and Fischbacher, 2003). A wide variety of economic games shows that people demand fairness in wealth allocation and are often willing to sacrifice their own interest to punish behaviors that they feel are unfair (Fehr and Fischbacher, 2003; Corradi-Dell’Acqua et al, 2013; Pedersen et al, 2013) In one such game, the ultimatum game (UG), one player acts as the proposer and is given a set amount of money to allocate to the recipient who, in turn, can either accept the offer, resulting in the allocation designated by the proposer, or reject the offer, resulting in both parties coming away with nothing (Güth et al, 1982). Research shows that proposers tend to split the pot evenly; recipients will reject unfair offers, and the rejection rate increases as a function of the level of unfairness Such “irrational” decisions, some researchers have argued, reflect norm-based preferences for equality (Camerer and Fehr, 2006) or personal reputation (Sanfey et al, 2003)

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