You are excusable! Neural correlates of economic neediness on empathic concern and fairness perception

Abstract

There is ample experimental evidence showing that the proposers' social role is related to individuals' fairness perception in the Ultimatum Game (UG). However, various social roles, e.g., degree of economic neediness, have different influences on fairness perception, yet it has not been well studied. In this study, we adapted the UG paradigm and recorded electroencephalography (EEG) to probe the neural signatures of whether and how the degree of neediness influences fairness perception. Behavioral results showed that responders are prone to accept unfair offers from proposers in need more than those who are not in need. At the brain level, MFN (medial frontal negativity) was more negative-going in response to unfair than fair offers for not-in-need proposers. In contrast, we found a reversed MFN difference response to unfair and fair offers for in-need proposers, showing a strongly pure altruistic phenomenon. Moreover, we found smaller P300 amplitude was induced in the proposer-in-need condition, compared with its counterpart, while a negative correlation between empathy rating and P300 amplitude in the proposer-inneed condition regardless of the offers' fairness. The current results indicate that the degree of neediness might reduce fairness perception by promoting the empathic concern toward the in-need proposers rather than decreasing the empathic concern for the not-in-need proposers.

The involvement of rTPJ in intention attribution during social decision making: A TMS study

“…In our experimental design the participants were not told of the possibility of interacting with a computer. Therefore, the participants not believing in the cover story (“nonbelievers”) likely activated a different strategy aimed at maximizing their return without considering the other agent, just because they did not believe any agent to be involved in the interaction and no emotional reaction emerged (Wang et al, 2022 ). Moreover, as far as the mentalization process is concerned, the standard UG task used in Sanfey et al ( 2003 ) is mostly used to target proposers’ ability to assess intentions of the other player, while it is not designed to target responders’ ability to evaluate partners’ intentions.…”