Knowledge Clips: Interacting with Others

The ultimatum game is an economic exchange between two people designed to measure fairness. While an economic perspective suggests human behavior is focused on personal gain, experiments, including the ultimatum game, reveal a more complex reality.

Prospect theory, based on experiments by Kahneman & Amos (1979), highlights the role of subjective experience in economic behavior. Loss aversion, where people have stronger emotional reactions to losing than gaining similar things, indicates a conservative and risk-averse nature. The ultimatum game involves a proposer and a responder, an extension of the dictator game with the option to reject.

Rejection in the ultimatum game is irrational and costly for both the proposer and responder. People consistently reject 30/70% offers and lower, showing aversion to inequity or unfairness. Two motivations for rejection include emotional commitment (anger/frustration/envy) and social preferences, aiming to restore equity and reciprocity through altruistic punishment.

The ultimatum game can be played in a single or repeated version, allowing the responder to signal dissatisfaction with proposals in the hope of a fairer outcome. Rejection, a form of altruistic punishment, is not stronger in kidney donors (true altruists) and is related to self-reported altruism.

Emotional and social components of rejection are explored through neuroscientific research. Activation of brain regions like dIPFC, Insula, and dACC in response to human unfairness suggests a social and emotional component. However, studies like Civai et al. (2010) indicate that rejection may not always be driven by arousal but rather by social value orientation (prosocial vs. proself).

In summary:
- Ultimatum game research shows emotional responses to unfairness.
- Punishment of unfairness occurs at a cost to oneself.
- Subjective emotion, rather than arousal, seems related to the rejection of unfairness.
- Prosocial value orientation may be the main motivational drive for costly punishment.

Altruism and Prosociality:

Altruism, doing something at the cost of oneself to help another, prompts the question of whether true altruism exists. Evolutionary arguments suggest sexual selection, kin selection, direct reciprocity (tit-for-tat), and indirect reciprocity (building reputation) as underlying factors.

In the trust game, an economic exchange to measure trust, participants typically invest and return percentages. Direct and repeated trust games explore building reputation and the adjustment of behavior based on social value orientation. Amygdala damage research reveals that individuals with damaged basolateral amygdala (BLA) are more generous, as they do not adjust their behavior based on the behavior of others.

Under perceived and real-time pressure, people become more prosocial, mimicking the effect of BLA damage. Emotion-driven altruism is emphasized in neuroscientific research, showing the joy of giving activates the striatum, subjective experiences activate the insula, and empathic behaviors involve the mPFC and TPJ.

In sum:
- Evolutionary theories emphasize the personal gain of prosocial behavior.
- Neuroscience favors an emotion-driven inherent drive for prosocial behavior.
- The interplay of biology and evolution suggests both cynics and believers may have valid points.