The Influence Of Touch Experience On Economic Decision Making

There is a growing body of literature that recognises the importance of the embodied. Recently researchers have examined the effects of body and sensorimotor system on economic decisions. They suggest that body play an important role in the process of decision-making. Sense of touch is the first one built in human’s sensorimotor system development. It is an important access to external information and manipulate external environment. Researchers have not treated the effect of touch on economic decisions in much detail in much detail. Several studies have documented one’s social value preference has impact on his/her decision-making in games. This research is based on a behavioural experiment to explore the effect of social value preference and touch experience on economic decision-making. In the experiment the third punishment, dictator game and ultimatum game were examined.The subjects in this research were undergraduate and graduate students. There were four experiments in this research. All these experiments were designed to examine the effect of touch experience on economic decision-making. In experiment 1, the subjects were asked to squeeze soft ball or hard ball so different feel of hardness could be adopted. Then, they were asked to do dictator game(1a) and ultimatum game(1b) as distributors. In experiment 1, the subjects who squeezed hard ball have a high preference in being selfish while those who squeezed soft ball tent to be more generous. In experiment 2, the subjects sat on benches or couches. Again, they were asked to do dictator game(2a) and ultimatum game(2b) as distributors. Experiment 2 suggested that the subjects who sat in hard chairs preferred being selfish while who sat in the soft chairs were generous. In experiment 3, the subjects were asked to squeeze hard ball or softball and this time they were asked to do dictator game(3a) and ultimatum game(3b) as respondents. Subjects who squeezed hard ball had a tendency to reject generous decisions. At the same time, subjects who squeezed softball were more generous. In experiment 4, the subjects sat on benches or in couches. And then they were asked to do dictator game(4a) and ultimatum game(4b) as respondents. This time subjects who had sat on benches preferred to accept generous decisions which those in couches being more generous.This research have suggested that touch experience have an effect on economic decision-making i.e. decision-making is embodied. It also shown that social value preference could influence the subjects’ economic-decision. Further research might explore the effects of sensorimotor system on other decision-making process.