The semiotics of the message and the messenger: How nonverbal communication affects fairness perception

Abstract

Nonverbal communication determines much of how we perceive explicit, verbal messages. Facial expressions and social touch, for example, influence affinity and conformity. To understand the interaction between nonverbal and verbal information, we studied how the psychophysiological time-course of semiotics—the decoding of the meaning of a message—is altered by interpersonal touch and facial expressions. A virtual-reality-based economic decision-making game, ultimatum, was used to investigate how participants perceived, and responded to, financial offers of variable levels of fairness. In line with previous studies, unfair offers evoked medial frontal negativity (MFN) within the N2 time window, which has been interpreted as reflecting an emotional reaction to violated social norms. Contrary to this emotional interpretation of the MFN, however, nonverbal signals did not modulate the MFN component, only affecting fairness perception during the P3 component. This suggests that the nonverbal context affects the late, but not the early, stage of fairness perception. We discuss the implications of the semiotics of the message and the messenger as a process by which parallel information sources of “who says what” are integrated in reverse order: of the message, then the messenger.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.3758/s13415-019-00738-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Does an agent’s touch always matter? Study on virtual Midas touch, masculinity, social status, and compliance in Polish men

“…The fact that they repeatedly played with each agent might have reduced the effect of touch through habituation effect, although Spapé et al [ 27 ] did find significant effects of touch even though the game and the touch was repeated multiple times. At the same time, in other studies where repeated mediated touch was studied, it was not always significant [ 32 , 33 ].…”

Electrophysiological Markers of Fairness and Selfishness Revealed by a Combination of Dictator and Ultimatum Games

“…These results support the hypothesis that in UG the MFN amplitude of Responders is likely to be associated with the expectation of fairness on the part of the Proposers. Thus, the perception of the offers by the Responders —all participants of this study played the role of Responders— depended on the behavioral group, and not on the absolute value of the endowment share [47,52,114,125].…”

I’ll make you an offer you can refuse: How socially sensitive is the MFN?

“…3). A more recent study replicated unfair MFN but showed this to be indistinguishable from unexpectedly generous offers 16 . Beyond the general sensitivity of the MFN, its social specificity was put to doubt by work suggesting social cues that affected decision making behaviour neither modulating MFN 16 nor FRN 17 .…”

“…A more recent study replicated unfair MFN but showed this to be indistinguishable from unexpectedly generous offers 16 . Beyond the general sensitivity of the MFN, its social specificity was put to doubt by work suggesting social cues that affected decision making behaviour neither modulating MFN 16 nor FRN 17 . Likewise, while observing errors in others evokes socially-induced ERNs, this effect itself was found socially insensitive, being independent of competitive context or rewarding outcome 18 .…”