The Effect Of Comparison Of The Social Hierarchy On The Unequality Aversion

To pursuit the social equity and justice relentless has always been anancient and eternal theme in human history and also is a value orientation insocial development and progress. Not only focus on the study of fairness ineconomics, political science perspective, and now more and more researchersbegan to consider the influencing factors of psychology.To pursuit the fairness and disgust the unfairness have been the humannature. According to the theory of unfair aversion, the reason that peoplehave a sense of injustice is the social comparison in different levels with others.No matter this comparison is upstream or downstream, they will affect peoplesubjectively unfair perception. There exists different levels in social hierarchywhich is bound to cause people comparison of upstream or downstream, andthis may produce different unfair perception. This study investigated the effectof the comparison of social hierarchy on the unfair aversion and its inherentcognitive mechanism by the ultimatum game paradigm.The study uses the2×7×3within-subject experimental design includingthe number of money (10and10000yuan), social hierarchy (army corpscommander, division commander, brigade commander, regimental commander,battalion commander, company commander and platoon commander), andallocation plan (9/1,8/2,7/3). The51undergraduate students participated inthis experiment. The Matlab sofeware is used to compile the experimentalprocedures. The subjects’ data are collect by two portable computers in theentire experiment.We compared the acceptance rate of the choice with repeated measuresANOVA for the number of money (10vs10000yuan), social hierarchy (highvs middle vs low) and allocation plans (9/1vs8/2vs7/3).The results show thatthe main effect of the number of money is not significant (F(1,50)=1.449, p=0.234), the acceptance rates of the choice in the condition of10and10000yuan is respective0.5690.044and0.5340.037; the main effect of socialhierarchy is very significant (F(2,100)=90.099, p=0.000), the acceptance rates of the choice in the condition of high, middle and low social hierarchy isrespective0.8100.032、0.4710.053and0.3740.041; the main effect ofallocation plan is very significant (F(2,100)=21.197, p=0.000), theacceptance rates of the choice in the condition of9/1,8/2and7/3is respective0.4460.046、0.6030.043and0.6060.034; the interaction effect of socialhierarchy and allocation plan is very significant (F(4,200)=20.081, p=0.000),the interaction effect of social hierarchy and the number of money is verysignificant (F(2,100)=14.927, p=0.000), the interaction effect of allocationplan and the number of money is very significant (F(2,100)=12.564, p=0.000).We compared the percentage of subjective willingness evaluation toaccept with repeated measures ANOVA for the number of money (10vs10000yuan), social hierarchy (high vs middle vs low) and allocation plans (9/1vs8/2vs7/3). The results show that the main effect of the number of money is notsignificant (F(1,50)=1.616, p=0.210), the percentage of subjectivewillingness evaluation to accept in the condition of10and10000yuan isrespective (33.0622.144)%and (35.0392.016)%; the main effect of socialhierarchy is very significant (F(2,100)=60.004, p=0.000), the percentage ofsubjective willingness evaluation to accept in the condition of high, middle andlow social hierarchy is respective (46.0602.513)%、(28.2162.103)%and(27.8752.011)%; the main effect of allocation plan is very significant(F(2,100)=123.251, p=0.000), the percentage of subjective willingnessevaluation to accept in the condition of9/1,8/2and7/3is respective(26.4492.163)%、(33.4711.892)%and (42.2311.983)%; the interactioneffect of social hierarchy and allocation plan is very significant (F(4,200)=5.774, p=0.000).The results of the acceptance rate of the choice and the percentage ofsubjective willingness evaluation to accept both show that social hierarchy caninfluence the perception of unequality aversion. When the allocation plans wereprovided by high social hierarchy, on the one hand, subjects maybe have higherprobability to accept; on the other hand, subjects’ the percentage of subjectivewillingness evaluation to accept is also generally higher. The modulation ofsocial hierarchy to unfair disgust probably was achieved through socialhierarchy inhibited the negative emotions. From the explicit perspective, this study confirmed the modulation effect of the social hierarchy to unfair aversion,and that high social hierarchy may be able to reduce people’s unfair disgust.The studies will try to find the internal mechanism of this modulation effectfrom physiological indicators in future.