The Neural Mechanism Differences Between Punishment And No Punishment On Benefit-Distributors’ Fairness Perception

Fairness studying under the punishment mechanism has always been the focus in the research field of sociology, psychology and management. Currently, the research object of fairness perceptive under the punishment mechanism has been concentrated on decision-makers who accept proposal passively (also known as the responder), rather than the decision-makers who master the power allocation (also known as the proposer). Therefore, it is more valuable to do the research on the distributor of benifits. The emphasis of this study is focused on fairness perceptive problem of the distributor of benifits under the punishment and no-punishment mechanism.Over the years, scholars have carried out the research mainly through behavioral experiments and survey research. Among them, the ultimatum game (UG) and the dictator game (DG) has often been used in the study of behavior experiments on the fairness perceptive and punishment mechanism. However, for seeking further evidence, behavioral experiments can not be penetrated into people’s psychological level, and even physical level. With the development of cognitive neuroscience, particularly in neuroscience techniques, such as event-related potentials (ERP), people have gradually mastered the capabilities for opening the "brain" black-box. Using of ERP technology, people can dig the brain characteristics and nerve activity of fairness perceptive of decision-makers under the punishment mechanism, and can reveal the nature behind the phenomenon mere efficiently.This study uses the ultimatum game (UG) and dictator game (DG) as its situation. And with the event-related potentials (ERP) technique, it studies on both the different behavior selection for distributor of benefits (student paticipatants) under the different punishment mechanism and the differences among neural mechanism behind the fairness criterion. At the same time, we make a quantitative study on the level of fairness perception of the sample through questionnaire survey on the samples of students and society. Based on the behavioral data, EEG data and questionnaire survey, the conclusions and inference of this study are as follows: Conclusion1:Compared with the punishment case, the distributiors of benefits are more likely to make the selfish unfair solutions under the no punishment case. The behavioral date shows that, under no punishument case, unfair solutions are make more frequently, strongly, firmly(shorter response time).Conclusion2:No matter what punishemet mechanism, more unfair of the distributon, more guilty (a conflict) the distributor of benefits is. It can been reflecting on the ERP components:compared to the unfair solution, fair solution can stimulate a more negative N400-like component (generalized but not the typical semantic N400, a component which can reflect the conflicts); compared to the relatively unfair solutions, absolutiely unfair solutions can stimulate a more negative N400-like component; compared to the fair solutions, relatively unfair solutions can stimulate a more negative N400-like component.Inference1:No matter what punishemet mechanism, the distributors of benefits who has a higher level of fairness perception, are more guilty when making the unfair solution.The meaning and innovation points of these results are:(1) From the behavioral date and EEG date, this study verifies the "economic man" and "limited rationality" hypothesis.(2) Prove the existence of "guilt" the the ERP study on the fairness perception of distributor of benefits, and show that the "moral mechanim" can play the role in economic activity.