Abstract
Participants in the Ultimatum Game will often reject unfair resource allocations at personal cost, reflecting a trade-off between financial gain and maintenance of social standing. Although this rejection behavior is linked to executive control, the exact role of cognitive regulation in relation to status cues is unclear. We propose that the salience of status cues affects how cognitive regulation resolves the conflict between financial gain and social status considerations. Situations that tax executive control by limiting available cognitive resources should increase acceptance rates for unfair offers, particularly when the conflict between economic self-interest and social reputation is high. Here, participants rated their own subjective social status, and then either mentally counted (Load) or ignored (No Load) simultaneously-presented tones while playing two rounds of the Ultimatum Game with an online (sham) “Proposer” of either high or low social status. A logistic regression revealed an interaction of Proposer status with cognitive load. Compared to the No Load group, the Load group showed higher acceptance rates for unfair offers from the high-status Proposer. In contrast, cognitive load did not influence acceptance rates for unfair offers from the low-status Proposer. Additionally, Proposer status interacted with the relative social distance between participant and Proposer. Participants close in social distance to the high-status Proposer were more likely to accept the unfair offer than those farther in social distance, whereas the opposite pattern was observed for offers from the low-status Proposer. Although rejection of unfair offers in the Ultimatum Game has previously been conceptualized as an intuitive response, these results instead suggest it reflects a deliberative strategy, dependent on cognitive resources, to prioritize social standing over short-term financial gain. This study reveals the dynamic interplay of cognitive resources and status concerns within this paradigm, providing new insights into when and why people reject inequitable divisions of resources.
Highlights
Over the past three decades, laboratory studies of “take-it-or-leave-it” bargaining behavior have repeatedly demonstrated that people are averse to unfair allocations of resources [1,2,3]
Having established that acceptance behavior for fair offers was in line with previous reports, we examined the roles of cognitive load, Proposer status, and relative social distance in acceptance rates for unfair offers
Previous research has suggested that cognitive regulation is integral to the decision to punish or accept unfair offers in the Ultimatum Game
Summary
Over the past three decades, laboratory studies of “take-it-or-leave-it” bargaining behavior have repeatedly demonstrated that people are averse to unfair allocations of resources [1,2,3]. In the standard Ultimatum Game scenario, one player (the Proposer) suggests a split of resources with a second player, the Responder. Researchers have proposed that this rejection behavior reflects an internal trade-off between financial gain and social status considerations, such as reputation maintenance [6] or enforcement of fairness norms [7]. Resolving this conflict between economic and social outcomes is thought to require cognitive resources, the exact role of executive control in Ultimatum Game scenarios, and how it interacts with social status considerations, has been debated. Because previous studies have manipulated available cognitive resources or social status considerations separately, it is unclear how these two factors differentially contribute to the decision to accept an unfair offer
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