Expectations in the Ultimatum Game: Distinct Effects of Mean and Variance of Expected Offers.

ABSTRACT: Being treated fairly by others is an important need in everyday life. Experimentally, fairness can be studied using the Ultimatum Game, where the decision to reject a low, but non-zero offer is seen as a way to punish the other player for an unacceptable offer. The canonical explanation of such behavior is inequity aversion: people prefer equal outcomes over personal gains. However, there is abundant evidence that people's decision to reject a low offer can be changed by contextual factors and their emotional state, which cannot be explained by the inequity aversion model. Here, we expand a recent alternative explanation: rejections are driven by deviations from expectations: the larger the difference between the actual offer and the expected offer, the more likely one is to reject the off

SUBMITTER: Vavra P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6070732 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature