The Impact Of Leadership And Social Value Orientation On The Level Of Group Member Cooperation In The Ultimatum Game

Cooperation is a basic form of social interaction,also the inevitable requirement of human existence and social development.In social interaction, people often face the situation that they have to distribute interest with others.In general,people would like to accept fair distribution,dislike unfair distribution. When both sides agree with a distributional plan,then cooperation reached.That's the ideal state.But in reality, because of the complex relationship of interests,an equitable distribution can't be reached every time.The offer tend to take his own benefit into consideration,so that he may provide with an unfair distribution plan.Also,the receptor will accept or reject it according to different opponents.In this study, we use the ultimatum game paradigm to simulate the real situation.All subjects were arranged as the receptor.We try to explore how subject's own social value orientation as well as facing with different types of opponents would influence their cooperation. Experiment 1 manipulated the type of opponents to investigate whether the cooperation threshold and expectation will be different when cooperators and individualists interact with group leaders and common group members.Experiment 2 was conducted to investigate the subject's reaction to appointed and elected leaders.Through the analysis of experimental data,the following main conclusions are concluded:(1) The less unfair the distributional plan was,the lower reception rate it was.Subjects also experience more stronger negative emotions.(2) Subject's social value orientation would affect their cooperation threshold and expectation.In contrast to cooperators,individualists' cooperation threshold and expectation are lower.(3)Different types of opponents would affect subjects' cooperation threshold and expectation.In contrast to common group member,when meet with a group leader,subjects' cooperation threshold and expectation are lower.(4) Subjects' cooperation threshold towards different types of opponents would be affected by subjects' social value orientation.Individualists' cooperation threshold is lower towards appointed leader.(5)Subjects' cooperation threshold and expectation towards appointed and elected leaders is affected by subject's social value orientation.Cooperators' cooperation threshold towards appointed leader is lower,but the expectation is higher;Individualists' cooperation threshold towards appointed leader is higher,but the expectation is lower.(6)Individualists' behavior could be explained by Social Identity Theory. Cooperators' behavior could be explained by Equity Theory.