Actual Outcome Affect The Perception Of Opportunity Equality

Social equity includes opportunity equity and outcome equity.Pprevious studies have mainly focused on outcome equity,but pay little attention to opportunity equity.Recent research suggests that actual outcomes can have an impact on opportunity equity,but the mechanisms behind this relationship are not well understood.Therefore,this study aims to investigate the impact of actual outcomes on the perceived fairness of opportunity in both competitive and non-competitive social contexts.To investigate this research question,the study adopts a two-experiment design.In experiment 1,the study examines the impact of actual outcomes on opportunity equity in a competitive social context,the experiment 1 includes a main experiment and a supplementary experiment.The main experiment used the event-related potential technique(ERPs)to investigate the temporal processing process of the influence of actual outcomes on the perception of opportunity fairness.The main experiment adopted a 3(opportunity conditions)× 3(actual results)within-subjects design,in which the opportunity conditions included 3 levels: advantage opportunity inequity(4 for participants vs.2 for their opponent,AI),opportunity equity(4 for participants vs.4 for their opponent,OE),and disadvantaged opportunity inequity(4for participants vs.6 for their opponent,DI).The actual outcomes consist of three levels: win,draw,and lose.In this task,the number on the card face of each card may be one of 1/2/3/4/5/6/7/8.Subjects need to choose a card from their available cards and compare the number on the card with the other side.After the experiment,subjects’ subjective sense of fairness and pleasure will be measured.Since the subjects’ subjective sense of fairness and pleasure was only measured at the end of the experiment,which could have introduced some randomness to the results.Therefore,a supplementary experiment was conducted to improve the experimental design.In the supplementary experiment,the subjects were asked to rate their sense of fairness and pleasure on a trial-by-trial basis,before and after they received feedback on the result of each trial.This allowed for a more precise measurement of the subjects’ subjective sense of justice and pleasure and reduced the randomness of the results.Additionally,experiment 2 aimed to explore the impact of actual outcomes on opportunity equity in a non-competitive context by using a behavioral experiment where participants and their game partner had different rules to win or draw based on the number they selected,if the number on the card was 5,6,7,or 8,the subject won,and if it was 1,2,3,or 4,the subject lost.The behavioral results of experiment 1 showed that the interaction between actual outcome and opportunity condition was marginal significant for fairness rating,while the interaction between actual outcome and opportunity condition was insignificant for pleasure rating.Multivariate mode analysis(MVPA)of the ERP data for the first three chance conditions showed that the three opportunity conditions(AI,OE,and DI)could be distinguished significantly in the early stage,indicating the effectiveness of the experimental design.The PCA analysis was then performed on the ERP data to exclude the influence of overlapping ERP components.The results showed that the interaction between the opportunity conditions and actual outcome was significant for the PCA-FRN component,but not for the PCA-P300 component.Specifically,when subjects won,there was no significant difference in the amplitude of PCA-FRN induced by the three opportunity conditions.However,when subjects tied,the OE condition induced more negative PCA-FRN amplitude than the AI condition.When subjects lost,both the AI and DI conditions induced more negative PCA-FRN amplitude than the OE condition.However,the PCA-P300 results showed that the interaction effect between opportunity conditions and actual outcomes was not significant.The results of experiment 1 supplementary experiment showed that,before feedback,the main effect of opportunity condition was significant,with OE having the highest perceived opportunity score,followed by AI,and DI having the lowest perceived opportunity score.However,after the actual outcome feedback was added,there was a significant third-order interaction between the feedback stage,actual outcome,and opportunity equity.Specifically,when subjects won,the perceived fairness score after feedback was higher than that before feedback for all three opportunity conditions.In the case of a tie,there was no difference in perceived fairness scores for AI before and after feedback.For OE,the perceived fairness score before feedback was higher than after feedback,while for DI,the perceived fairness score after feedback was higher than that before feedback.When subjects lost,the perceived fairness score before feedback was higher than that after feedback for all three opportunity conditions.The results of experiment 2 showed that before feedback,OE had the highest perceived fairness and pleasure score,followed by AI,and DI had the lowest perceived fairness and pleasure score.However,after the actual outcome feedback was added,there was a significant third-order interaction between feedback stage,actual outcome,and opportunity equity.When the subject won,the perceived fairness and pleasure scores after feedback were higher than those before feedback.On the other hand,when the subject lost,the perceived fairness and pleasure scores before feedback were higher than those after feedback.In summary,the results of experiment 1 show that in competitive social context,the actual outcome will have an impact on opportunity equity,and it mainly occurs in the semi-automated early processing stage.The results of experiment 2 show that in the context of non-competitive society,the actual outcome will also have an impact on opportunity equity.These findings provide valuable insights into the complex brain activity processes involved in the influence of actual outcomes on opportunity justice and contribute to our understanding of this field.Further research can build upon these results to investigate the underlying mechanisms and potential interventions to promote opportunity equity.