The Relationship Between Interpersonal Self - Reliance And Distribution Based On Ultimatum

Allocation is an social and economic behavior that has to take self interests into account as well as others’ interests. Ultimatum game is a classic paradigm commonly used in psychological and economics research for studying decision-making behaviors. Some researches show that a variety of personality traits may predict allocation of ultimatum games. However, the existing researches doesn’t always draw consistent conclusions, the reason may be related to the situational constraints of ultimatum game. Many researches show that people tend to offer pro-self allocation and personality traits generate more effect on allocation in situations with less constraint force. Accordingly, we put forward the moderate model of situation constraints which suggest situation with less constraints will enhance the impact of the personality traits on allocation. The model fits personality-situation interactionist perspective.The personality variable we study is interpersonal self-support. Interpersonal self-support consists of a set of five personality traits that can help individuals solve the primary interpersonal problems in daily life. Among the five traits, interpersonal responsibility emphasis on sticking to morality and responsibility while interpersonal openness decide the extend of accepting other individuals positively. Individuals scoring high on interpersonal responsibility and interpersonal openness are usually pro-social individuals. Therefore, we assume interpersonal responsibility and interpersonal openness are related to allocation of ultimatum game.We design three experiments to explorer the relationship between interpersonal self-support traits (especially interpersonal responsibility and interpersonal openness) and allocation of ultimatum game. The first experiment explore the relationship between ISS traits and allocation and meanwhile test the moderate model of situational strength. The second experiment further explorer the inner mechanism of the relationship. The third experiment verify whether ISS could predict allocation in ultimatum game directly.Experimental results find that in both of the situations with strong constraint force, individuals scoring high on interpersonal responsibility have no significant difference on allocation with those scoring low, however, in both of the situations with weak constraint force, individuals scoring low on interpersonal responsibility distribute more money to themselves than those scoring high. In the weak situation of the second experiment (responders has weak power), low interpersonal responsibility individuals have significant difference on allocation compared with strong situation while high interpersonal responsibility individuals don’t. However, in both situation of the third experiment (asymmetric/symmetric information), low interpersonal responsibility individuals have significant difference on allocation as well, however, high interpersonal responsibility individuals have significant difference on allocation, either, but the difference scale is smaller than low interpersonal responsibility individuals. Besides, after controlling the big five personality, negative attitude toward others can partially mediate the relationship between interpersonal responsibility and allocation. Finally, it has been verified that interpersonal responsibility would negatively predict the amount of money given to self.The results of experiments suggest that, as we expected, interpersonal responsibility are closely related to allocation of ultimatum game. Besides, situational strength can moderate interpersonal responsibility’s impact on allocation. In the second experiment, weak constraints activate low interpersonal responsibility trait so that individuals with low interpersonal responsibility trait offer even more to themselves than in the strong situation. While high interpersonal responsibility individuals don’t show this pattern. However, the third experiment show that high interpersonal responsibility individuals offer more either to themselves in weak constraint situation as well as low interpersonal responsibility individuals. This result suggest that interpersonal responsibility trait may help people resist temptation but its force is limited. Finally, the significant mediation effect suggest that the reason why low interpersonal responsibility individuals offer more to themselves and offer less to others may be due to their negative attitudes toward general people.