Hello handsome! Male's facial attractiveness gives rise to female's fairness bias in Ultimatum Game scenarios—An ERP study

Abstract

The current study delineated how male proposers’ facial attractiveness affect female responders’ fairness considerations and their subsequent decision outcome during the Ultimatum Game (UG). Event Related Potentials (ERPs) were recorded from 17 female subjects, who played the role as responders and had to decide whether to accept offers from either attractive or unattractive male proposers. Behavioral data (Acceptance Ratio and Response time) revealed that, more offers were accepted from attractive-face conditions; subjects typically responded quicker to unfair offers from unattractive proposers as compared with slower to unfair offers from attractive proposers. The ERP data demonstrated similar N2 amplitudes elicited by both attractive and unattractive faces, and a larger early frontal LPP elicited by the attractive faces compared with unattractive ones, but no significant differences of both late posterior LPP and typical parietal LPP amplitudes were observed between these two face conditions, which was different from our previous study with similar paradigm but male participants. The results suggest that, in comparison to males, females might not experience the potential attention bias towards unattractive opposite-sex faces and are less likely to possess an enhanced processing and evaluation of those faces. This phenomenon might be explained by endogenous gender differences in mate preference. The feedback-related negativity (FRN) and P300 responses during an offer presentation were further measured in both attractive-face and unattractive-face conditions and the results demonstrated that the amplitudes elicited by fair and unfair offers were not statistically different in the former condition, but were different in the latter condition. More specifically, unfair offers generated larger FRN and smaller P300 than fair ones in the unattractive-face condition. Findings suggest that, although females tend to possess less salient evaluation of male’s facial attractiveness, the attractiveness of male proposers would still attenuate female responders’ fairness consideration during the UG.

An event-related potential comparison of facial expression processing between cartoon and real faces

“…The LPP amplitudes induced by real faces were significantly larger than those induced by cartoon faces. This finding is consistent with those of previous studies [7, 10, 49]. When the neutral expressions of real faces and puppet faces were compared, no differences in N170 were observed.…”

An Event-related Potential Comparison of Facial Expression Processing between Cartoon and Real Faces

“…Compared with simplified cartoon faces, real faces convey more personal information and social meaning. LPP is related to facial attractiveness (Ma et al, 2017;Marzi & Viggiano, 2010;Werheid, Schacht & Sommer, 2007). Therefore, the results of the present study might suggest that real faces are more attractive than simplified cartoon faces to adults.…”

“…When the neutral expressions of real faces and puppet faces were compared, no differences in N170 were observed. However, a stronger LPP was found with regard to real faces starting at 400 ms (Ma, Qian, Hu & Wang, 2017). This effect is because of the significance and uniqueness of the real face as well as the understanding of the portrayed individual (Wheatley, Weinberg, Looser, Moran & Hajcak, 2011) because computer-generated faces are usually more difficult to remember (Balas & Pacella, 2015;Crookes et al, 2015).…”

Brains versus beauty in the knowledge economy

“…Jin, Fan, Dai and Ma (2017) found the beauty premium present in online peer-to-peer lending, with lenders tending to be more tolerant towards attractive borrowers' dishonest behaviour. Similarly, Ma, Qian, Hu and Wang (2017) demonstrated that attractive male proposers playing the ultimatum game benefit from favourable bias because of their attractiveness, as a result of compromises to the fairness considerations of the female responders.…”