Abstract
Research from cultural and social psychology has identified a central role of self-construal, or the way one views themselves in relation to others, in social cognition. Accordingly, it is plausible that self-construal plays an instrumental role in important aspects of decision-making relating to fairness considerations. Prior research has shown that priming methodology is a useful tool to experimentally isolate the effect of self-construal on social decision-making processes. In the current study we investigated the neural effects of self-construal priming on fairness considerations, using an Ultimatum Game setup (N = 97). Based on previous findings, we predicted an interaction between the self-construal prime and gender on Ultimatum Game behavior; males primed with interdependence would reject the offer relatively more compared to independence, and vice versa for females. As previous neuro-imaging research has established an instrumental role of the anterior insula (AI) and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) in the rejection of unfair offers, we expected higher rejection rates to be mirrored by increased activity in these regions. However, the analyses did not confirm these predictions. As further inspection of the data revealed a habituation effect, we performed a follow-up analysis on the first block (N = 59). This subsequent analysis revealed that priming interdependence resulted in reduced AI activity compared to priming independence, although no behavioral differences were observed. The difference was theorized to result from motivations as conflict avoidance and harmony maintenance, commonly associated with interdependence. Furthermore, the analysis revealed greater vmPFC activity for females compared to males for rejected offers, although this effect was not robust when controlled for trait self-construal. These follow-up analyses suggest that self-construal priming influences insula activity, as well as implicating an underlying role of trait self-construal in observed gender differences in vmPFC activity relating to fairness considerations.
Highlights
The role of fairness in social and economic decision-making has been a central topic in psychological research over the past few decades (Kahneman et al, 1986)
We found no support for the main predictions concerning the gender by self-construal priming interaction for anterior insula (AI) and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) activity at the neural level, nor did we replicate our previous findings at the behavioral level
We found that the effect of gender on vmPFC activity decreased when controlling for trait self-construal, which suggests that the gender effect is mostly driven by differences in trait self-construal which, in our data, differed between gender
Summary
The role of fairness in social and economic decision-making has been a central topic in psychological research over the past few decades (Kahneman et al, 1986). Accumulating research from social and cultural psychology has suggested that individual differences in self-construal, or the way one defines him- or herself in relation to others, may partly explain this variation; e.g., individuals that construct an independent selfmake choices that primarily promote their own well-being, while those that construct an interdependent self-incorporate the goals and motivations of relevant others in their decisionmaking and behavior (Gelfand et al, 2002; Gollwitzer and Bücklein, 2007; Cross et al, 2011). Several studies have suggested that the effects of self-construal may be moderated by gender (Maddux and Brewer, 2005; Van Vugt et al, 2007; Flinkenflogel et al, 2017). The aim of this study was to further examine the relationship between self-construal and gender relating to fairness, while investigating the underlying neural correlates using functional neuroimaging
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