The myth of the extra mile: Psychological processes and neural mechanisms underlying overcompensation effects

Abstract

Trust violations regularly occur under the form of distributive fairness violations. In response to such violations, the transgressor can signal his or her willingness to go the “extra mile” by compensating the victim beyond the inflicted damage, which is generally referred to as overcompensation. We conducted two behavioral studies (Studies 1 and 2) and one fMRI experiment (Study 3) to investigate the psychological processes and supporting neural systems that underlie the effectiveness of overcompensation as a strategy to enhance trust in interpersonal relationships. Towards this end, we investigated how people on the receiving end of the compensation experience being overcompensated. Our studies, first of all, revealed that after being overcompensated people did not report higher levels of trust in the transgressor than after being equally compensated, a finding that runs counter the “extra mile” logic. As expected, our behavioral findings additionally showed that, compared to equal compensation, overcompensation evoked more conflicting thoughts and more sense-making processes in the mind of the receiver. Converging evidence for these findings was provided by our neuroimaging results, which revealed higher activations in the conflict-monitoring and the mentalizing network of the brain after overcompensation compared to equal compensation. Finally, the results of our behavioral studies suggest that conflicting thoughts and sense-making serially mediate the effect that overcompensation has on trust perceptions. Together, these findings shed new light on why overcompensation can backfire and even lead to a further decline of trust. We discuss the theoretical implications of these findings and formulate suggestions for future research.