The Influence Of Self And Others Reference Point On Altruistic Decision-making

Altruistic decision-making is a typical representative of social decision-making,the core of which lies in the tradeoff between self and others' interests.Discussion of altruistic decision-making can not only help describe and explain individual's altruistic behavior,but help find psychological mechanism that promotes social collaborations as well.Therefore,altruistic decision-making is one of the research focuses in recent years.However,most studies focused mainly on the generating mechanism of altruistic behavior and influence of emotions and cognitive factors from the perspective of individuals.The influence of task environment is seldom considered,and particularly there is very few comparative study of altruistic decision-making preferences in different task environments.The main reason is that there is no effective theoretical tool that can be used to define the complicated task environment of altruistic decision-making ecologically validly and clearly.In fact,no matter how complicated the task environment of altruistic decision-making will be,its core information is self and others' status and prediction result of altruistic decision-making,and it can be defined by means of reference point of decision-making.Tri-reference point(TRP)theory which was proposed under the framework of bounded rationality provides a concise and effective model and framework to discuss the tradeoff between self and others' interests in altruistic decision-making from the perspective of task environment.Our research was based on the theoretical framework of TRP.By controlling the reference point,gain & loss framework and relationship,the principle and mechanism of individual's altruistic decisionmaking determined by self and others' minimum requirement,status quo,target reference point,gain & loss framework and relationship under difference task environments were investigated systematically.The research consisted of two parts,with four experiments included in each part respectively.Part one determined how the task environment that is composed of interpersonal reference point and gain & loss framework influenced altruistic decision-making.Experiment one explored how others' reference point straddling influenced altruistic decision-making under different self-status.In a score tradeoff task,subjects were asked to add or subtract the score.After adding/subtraction,the decision maker's self-status remained unchanged,while others would be faced with the minimum requirement,status quo and goal straddling problem.Experiment two discussed how self-reference point straddling influenced altruistic decision-making under different others' status.The difference between the two experiments was that decision maker's self-status would straddle the minimum requirement,status quo and goal,while others' status remained unchanged.In experiment three,how interpersonal reference point straddling conflict influenced individual's altruistic decision-making was discussed,which meant that self and others would straddle the same or different reference points(minimum requirement,status quo and goal)after score adding/subtraction.Experiment four discussed how others' reference point straddling influenced altruistic decision-making under actual self-status.That is,subjects(college students)were divided according to their practice course scores,and after score adding/subtraction,others' status would straddle the three-reference point,while self-status not.In part two,relationship variable was added to help investigate the principle of individual's altruistic decision-making determined by self-reference point,relationship reference point,gain & loss framework under different task environment systematically.Experiment five examined how relationship reference point straddling influenced altruistic decisionmaking under different self-status.Experiment six examined how different relationship statuses influenced altruistic decision-making when self-reference point straddled.Experiment seven examined how self and relationship reference point straddling influenced altruistic decision-making.Finally,experiment eight examined how relationship reference point straddling influenced altruistic decision-making under real self-status.Five conclusions were drawn from experimental results.Firstly,the importance of TRP in altruistic decision-making was ranked as the minimum requirement priority,followed by the goal and status quo.Both self and others' status showed obvious minimum requirement priorities.When self-status straddled minimum requirement,altruism rate was low.However,when others' status straddled minimum requirement,then altruism rate was high.Secondly,in the case that one side straddled reference point with another side not,whether the decision maker was selfish or altruistic he would be influenced by the reference straddling.Who straddled the reference point,then its interest should be maintained.Thirdly,under the environment that self and others' reference point conflicted with each other,self-reference point straddling regulated the influence of others' reference straddling on altruistic decision-making.Individual was most altruistic under three environments: self straddling status quo and others straddling minimum requirement,self straddling status quo and others straddling goal,and self straddling goal and others straddling minimum requirement.Additionally,different task environments had different effects on gain & loss frameworks.In the case that self did not straddle reference point while others did,then individual's altruism rate under the gain framework was higher than that under the loss framework.Nevertheless,in the case that self did not straddle the reference point while relationship straddled the reference point and relationship reference points conflicted with each other,then individual's altruism rate under the loss framework was higher than that under the gain framework.Finally,relationship had different influences under different task environments composed by self-others reference point.In the case that others straddled reference point under different self-status,then relationship only differed under the gain framework.In the case that self straddled reference point,then relationship differed when others were in a bad situation.In the case that relationship reference points conflicted with each other,relationship differed when others straddle minimum requirement,and relationship differed only under the loss framework when others straddled goal.The above conclusions mean that individual's altruistic decision-making will be influenced by the task environment determined by self and others' TRP,gain & loss framework and relationship,and show different behavior patterns.Determining the task environment of altruistic decision-making by means of TRP not only makes up for the deficiency of decision-making task environment research in the altruistic decision-making area to a certain extent and enriches the current research results,but also enlightens people to use the characteristics and laws of task environment to help make a better decision.Meanwhile,our research not only extends the application field of TRP from individual decision-making to social decision-making,but from benefit situation to loss situation as well,and further proves the applicability of TRP.