Be Strong Enough to Say No: Self-Affirmation Increases Rejection to Unfair Offers

We propose that self-affirmation may endow people more psychological resources to buffer against the negative influence of rejecting unfair offers in the classic ultimatum game (UG) and further lead to a stronger tendency to reject those offers. We tested this possibility by conducting an event-rela...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inFrontiers in psychology Vol. 7; p. 1824
Main Authors Gu, Ruolei, Yang, Jing, Shi, Yuanyuan, Luo, Yi, Luo, Yu L L, Cai, Huajian
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Switzerland Frontiers Media S.A 22.11.2016
Subjects
event-related potential (ERP)
fairness
Psychology
self-affirmation
social decision-making
social rejection
fairness
P3
self-affirmation
social decision-making
social rejection
event-related potential
ultimatum game
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Summary:We propose that self-affirmation may endow people more psychological resources to buffer against the negative influence of rejecting unfair offers in the classic ultimatum game (UG) and further lead to a stronger tendency to reject those offers. We tested this possibility by conducting an event-related potential (ERP) study about the UG, with the ERP component P3 as an indirect indicator of psychological resources. Participants were randomly assigned to the affirmation or control condition and then completed the UG through electrophysiological recording. As expected, the behavioral data indicated that compared with unaffirmed ones, affirmed participants were more likely to reject unfair UG offers; the electrophysiological data indicated that compared to the unaffirmed, affirmed participants showed a greater P3 in response to the presentation of an offer. These findings suggest that psychological resources may play a role in rejecting others beyond the fairness concern, and additionally shed light on the neural mechanisms underlying self-affirmation.
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Edited by: Thomas L. Webb, University of Sheffield, UK
Reviewed by: Tracy Epton, University of Manchester, UK; Peter Harris, University of Sussex, UK; Christopher N. Cascio, University of Pennsylvania, USA
These authors have contributed equally to this work.
This article was submitted to Personality and Social Psychology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology
ISSN:1664-1078
1664-1078
DOI:10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01824