title: Be Strong Enough to Say No: Self-Affirmation Increases Rejection to Unfair Offers.
abstract: We propose that self-affirmation may endow people more psychological resources to buffer against the negative influence of rejecting unfair offers in the classic ultimatum game (UG) and further lead to a stronger tendency to reject those offers. We tested this possibility by conducting an event-related potential (ERP) study about the UG, with the ERP component P3 as an indirect indicator of psychological resources. Participants were randomly assigned to the affirmation or control condition and then completed the UG through electrophysiological recording. As expected, the behavioral data indicated that compared with unaffirmed ones, affirmed participants were more likely to reject unfair UG offers; the electrophysiological data indicated that compared to the unaffirmed, affirmed participants showed a greater P3 in response to the presentation of an offer. These findings suggest that psychological resources may play a role in rejecting others beyond the fairness concern, and additionally shed light on the neural mechanisms underlying self-affirmation.
authors.affiliation: CAS Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Ruolei
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Gu
authors.affiliation: College of Tourism, Huaqiao University Quanzhou, China.
authors.forename: Jing
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Social Science, The Chinese University of Hong Kong Hong Kong, China.
authors.forename: Yuanyuan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Shi
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning, Beijing Normal University Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Yi
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Luo
authors.affiliation: CAS Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Yu L L
authors.initials: YL
authors.lastname: Luo
authors.affiliation: CAS Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Huajian
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Cai
keywords: P3; event-related potential; fairness; self-affirmation; social decision-making; social rejection; ultimatum game