The effect of partner-directed emotion in social exchange decision-making

Abstract

Despite the prevalence of studies examining economic decision-making as a purely rational phenomenon, common sense suggests that emotions affect our decision-making particularly in a social context. To explore the influence of emotions on economic decision-making, we manipulated opponent-directed emotions prior to engaging participants in two social exchange decision-making games (the Trust Game and the Prisoner's Dilemma). Participants played both games with three different (fictional) partners and their tendency to defect was measured. Prior to playing each game, participants exchanged handwritten “essays” with their partners, and subsequently exchanged evaluations of each essay. The essays and evaluations, read by the participant, were designed to induce either anger, sympathy, or a neutral emotional response toward the confederate with whom they would then play the social exchange games. Galvanic skin conductance level (SCL) showed enhanced physiological arousal during anger induction compared to both the neutral and sympathy conditions. In both social exchange games, participants were most likely to defect against their partner after anger induction and least likely to defect after sympathy induction, with the neutral condition eliciting intermediate defection rates. This pattern was found to be strongest in participants exhibiting low cognitive control (as measured by a Go/no-Go task). The findings indicate that emotions felt toward another individual alter how one chooses to interact with them, and that this influence depends both on the specific emotion induced and the cognitive control of the individual.

Left Amygdala and Putamen Activation Modulate Emotion Driven Decisions in the Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma Game

“…Buyers were less likely to sign a deal in the negative emotion condition compared to positive and neutral emotion conditions (Kopelman et al, 2006). The same pattern of behavior is observed in the iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma with anger and sympathy emotions felt toward the other: sympathy toward the opponent increases cooperation, while anger toward the opponent increases defection compared to the neutral condition (Eimontaite et al, 2013). On the other hand, it is not only the valence of the emotion which needs to be considered, but also the motivation which is triggered by induced emotion.…”

The neurobiology of collective action

“…The model takes as its foundation a model introduced in a footnote by the prominent Irish social philosopher Edgeworth ( 1881/2012 ) in his book Mathematical Psychics: An Essay on the Application of Mathematics to the Moral Sciences where utility is obtained from one's own consumption and a weighted utility of another's consumption (Edgeworth, 1881/1967 ). Andreoni ( 1990 ); Sally ( 2001 , 2002 ), and Levitt and List ( 2007 ) have proposed similar models without drawing on neural findings, while Morishima et al ( 2012 ), develop a neurally-informed mathematical model based on theory of mind. Similar to Morishima et al we propose a model steeped in experimental findings that can shed new insights into CA.…”

Navigating Motivation: A Semantic and Subjective Atlas of 7 Motives

“…Also, the word "careful"/"precautious" is used to describe "competence" in the NEO-PIR (Costa & McCrae, 1992), but by our participants it was associated to care. Researchers juxtaposing self-report measures to (economic) decision making paradigms (Ben-Shakhar, Bornstein, & Hopfensitz, 2007;Bosman, Sutter, & Winden, 2005;Eimontaite et al, 2013;Hopfensitz & Reuben, 2009;Maner et al, 2002;Reuben & Winden, 2008) could use our motive-specific words to better identify the motives underlying specific decisions and investigate whether indeed such motives are related to the corresponding decision patterns anticipated above.…”

“…For example, fear has been frequently been associated to risk-, loss-, or ambiguity aversion in economic decision making (Canessa & Crespi, 2013;Hartley & Phelps, 2012;Lerner & Keltner, 2001;Maner & Gerend, 2007;Martino & Camerer, 2010;Porcelli & Delgado, 2009;Raghunathan & Pham, 1999), while Anger has been associated with increased risk taking (Fessler, Pillsworth, & Flamson, 2004;Kugler, Kausel, & Kocher, 2012;Lerner & Keltner, 2001), with so-called altruistic punishment towards experienced unfairness (Carpenter & Matthews, 2009;Seip, Dijk, & Rotteveel, 2014;Strobel et al, 2011;Yamagishi et al, 2009), as well as with decreased generosity, trust and cooperation in game-theoretic paradigms (Eimontaite, Nicolle, Schindler, & Goel, 2013;Polman & Kim, 2013;Small & Lerner, 2008).…”