Thesis
Affect and the dual-process theory of decision making in the ultimatum game
Washington State University
Master of Science (MS), Washington State University
2012
Handle:
https://hdl.handle.net/2376/103831
Abstract
According to game theory, people are expected to be self-interested, rational maximizers when engaged in economic games. However, this does not seem to be the case with players in the Ultimatum Game (UG), in which participants tend to reject offers of money they regard as an unfair split between two players. Rationally, any offer should be accepted because even a small amount of money is preferable to none. This study was designed to examine the behavior of the responder using the dual-process model of decision making. A common, but untried, assumption of prior UG studies is that the rejection of seemingly unfair offers is due to an automatic and intuitive emotional reaction to inequity. The purpose of the first experiment was to determine which decision making pathway contains the affective component of the responder’s behavior by hindering one of the routes to see if it would affect the rejection rates of unfair offers. A visuospatial working memory task was used to obstruct the participants’ analytical processing while they played the UG for monetary reward. The number of rejections for each of the five offer amounts was measured in the working memory control condition and in the load condition. According to the data, rejection rates were significantly affected by the proposed offer amount, but the working memory condition did not have any effect. The second experiment was the same as the first one, except financial incentives were not utilized in order to determine if hypothetical rewards generate the same responses as monetary ones to each offer amount. The data yielded the same pattern of effects as the first experiment, but significant differences in rejection rates were found for $2.00, $3.00, and $4.00 proposals.
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Details
- Title
- Affect and the dual-process theory of decision making in the ultimatum game
- Creators
- Shervin Bazmi
- Contributors
- Paul Whitney (Degree Supervisor)
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- Psychology, Department of
- Theses and Dissertations
- Master of Science (MS), Washington State University
- Publisher
- Washington State University; Pullman, Wash. :
- Identifiers
- 99900525391401842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Thesis