The Influence Of Perceived Fairness On Cooperation And Self-Serving Dishonesty And Its Neural Mechanism

Fairness has been a key principle in social interactions since the dawn of humanity,as it dictates social expectations and defines acceptable social behaviors.As such,most humans judge social interactions,at least in part,based on their fairness,by answering the question “was this action reasonable,right,and just?”,and fairness perceptions influence a wide range of social and professional interactions.Importantly,violations of fairness norms and expectations(perceived unfairness),can lead to adverse emotional and behavioral responses.Fairness is a key basis upon which people decide to cooperate,and perceived unfairness is likely to lead to no cooperation.Possible effects of fairness on cooperation can be explained through inequity aversion theory,according to which people compare their payoffs with these of others and prefer payoffs that are more equally distributed.Another common response to fairness(unfairness)is honest(dishonest)behaviors.This association is based on equity theory,according to which people try to restore equity when treated unfairly,in part through deception,unethical and dishonest behavior.This idea is also consistent with the Broken Window Theory,which posits that people are less likely to adhere to social norms in environments where violation of social norms is easily noticeable.Therefore,experiencing unfairness can increase dishonesty.In this study,we aim at studying cooperation in response to unfair treatment and integrating the streams of research on cooperation and dishonesty in response to unfair treatment to explore whether dishonesty would weaken or strengthen the impact of fairness on cooperation in behavioral research.First,lying can serve as a basis for reduced cooperation,and further deteriorate social interactions.This may be explained by moral disengagement theories,according to which unethical behaviors in one domain can trivialize and encourage unethical behaviors in another,and help people morally disengage and perform such behaviors.As such,lying on one task,may further prime people to reduce reliance on moral norms,and beyond the unfair treatment effect,motivate justice restoration through focusing on one’s own needs,contribute to lower cooperation.Furthermore,If people lie even though they were treated fairly,they are expected to regret,feel ashamed and/or guilty about their actions,plausibly in form of increased cooperation.Then this study uses f MRI cognitive neuroscience to further explore the difference in cooperation between fair and unfair situations,and provide evidence of brain function for the influence of fairness on cooperation.Exp.1 aimed to test if people cooperate less when they are subjected to perceived unfairness(i.e.,when they are in the unfair condition as compared to the fair condition).The experiment employed a simple between-subject design(fair vs.unfair).We employed a two-person prisoner’s dilemma game,in which participants were instructed to play with pre-assigned players whom they saw,and which were then replaced(after the player stepped into a separate room)by preprogramed algorithms(i.e.,players thought they are playing against a person).Participants were randomly assigned to play this game with either a fair player(whose choices were80% cooperation)or an unfair player(whose choices were 80% defection).Participants reported higher perceived opponent fairness in the cooperation/ fair condition than in the defection/ unfair condition.Moreover,participants’ cooperation rate was higher in the fair condition than in the unfair condition.Exp.2 aimed to replicate and extend the results from Exp.1.Extensions include measuring dishonesty.Dishonesty was measured using the die-rolling task,in which each participant throws a die privately—so that only he or she can see the number thrown—and reports the outcome for which the participant gets paid depending on the reported number.Participants were told that the number they reported would be used to either add the same amount to their tally or their opponent’s tally or deduct the same amount from their opponent’s tally.The experiment followed a between-subjects design,which consisted of two fairness conditions(fair vs.unfair)and three-point systems(added to self vs.deducted to others vs.added to others).It replicated the results of Exp.1 and found there is a significant increase in lying behavior in unfair situations.To examine whether lying moderates the effect of fairness on cooperation,two moderation analyses were conducted.Ultimately,the results indicated that lying/dishonesty acted as a significant moderator that attenuated the effect of fairness on cooperation.The specifically showed that participants who were in the fair condition and lied,cooperated more compared to people in the other conditions.Exp.3 uses f MRI technology to explore the neural mechanism differences of cooperation in different fair situations.It turns out that the two scenarios are different in the expectation phase,the decision phase,and the feedback phase.In the expectation phase,compared with the unfair situation,the subjects in the fair situation activated more brain areas such as the anterior cingulate gyrus,the medial superior frontal gyrus,the caudate nucleus,the medial and para cingulate gyrus;In the decision stage,compared with the unfair situation,in the fair situation,the subjects activated more brain regions such as the middle frontal gyrus,caudate nucleus/forebrain insula,inferior frontal gyrus,and cingulate gyrus;in the feedback stage,compared with the fair situation,the subjects activated more brain areas such as the caudate nucleus,the insula,the cingulate gyrus,and the inferior frontal gyrus of the orbit under the unfair situation.These results indicate: 1)In terms of behavior,unfair situations(the other player chooses not to cooperate more)will cause participants to feel more unfair,and in this situation,cooperation will be significantly reduced,and lying will be significantly increased.And there is a certain connection between lying and cooperation and fairness.Lying will regulate the influence of the sense of fairness on cooperative behavior,especially in a fair situation.If participants choose to lie more,they will choose more to cooperate and achieve morality balance;and in an unfair situation,no matter how much you lie,it will not affect cooperative behavior and form moral separation.2)In brain imaging research,we have discovered the relationship between cooperation and sense of fairness in different fair situations,especially in the result feedback stage,in unfair situations(when the other party does not cooperate more)cingulate back,the caudate nucleus/insula and the inferior frontal gyrus of the orbit which are related to unfairness were more strongly activated.