ERPs Study On Effect Of Social Comparison On Fair Decision In Benefit Or Loss Situation

In the social production activities, the human are always in a social group and they have a drive to compare with others in ability and information. Therefore, people make social comparison as a reference to make certain decisions. That is to say, the decision or behavior will be affected by social comparison. The fair has been the focus of an important pursuit of human society and the scientific research. A lot of previous research using the ultimatum game have proved that humans do have a tendency to pursue fair and hate unfair. When subjected to unfair treatment, the drive of pursuit of fairness will drive people to sacrifice their own economic interests to punish each other, so as to achieve the purpose of justice.This study, combining social comparison and fair decision-making together and dividing fair decision scenarios into profit and loss conditions, investigated the effects of different types of social comparison on individual fair decision. In order to study the influence of social comparison on the fair decision, this study includes two experiments:Experiment one investigate how social comparison effects on fair decision and its physiological mechanism in benefit condition.Experiment one investigate how social comparison effects on fair decision and its physiological mechanism in loss condition.Experiment one finds that in the benefit situation, upward comparison increases the reject rate of subject on unfair allocation scheme and induces a larger amplitude of FRN while downward comparison reduces the reject rate of subject on unfair allocation scheme and induces a smaller amplitude of FRN. Analysis of LPP finds that compared no social comparison, both upward comparison and downward comparison induce a larger amplitude of LPP. Further analysis finds that in no compare and downward compare condition, compared to extreme unfair allocation scheme, moderate unfair allocation scheme induces a larger amplitude LPP.Experiment two finds that in loss situation, upward comparison increases the reject rate of subject on unfair allocation scheme and induces a larger amplitude of FRN while the rejection rate and amplitude of FRN of downward and no social comparison have no difference. Analysis of LPP finds compared extreme allocation scheme, moderate scheme induces a larger amplitude of LPP. However, LPP is not affected by social comparison.