Reject Unfair:Intuitive Automatic Or Prudent Thinking?

Fairness has always been an important pursuit of human society and the research focus of many disciplines.In the past,ultimatum game was widely used to confirm the existence of human fairness preference.In recent years,the dual system theory proposed that individuals need to experience the processing of intuitive automatic and prudent thinking in the process of fairness decision-making before making the final decision.The intuitive automatic system is the instinctive response of an individual.The prudential thinking system needs the participation of cognitive resources to process information.According to the existing research results,when an individual participates in the ultimatum game as a responder,it is still uncertain whether the rejection of unfairness is the response under the intuitive automatic system or the response after careful thinking,and which of the two systems' function is to maximize their own interests.Also,the previous research is more about the disadvantageuos inequity.Only few people discuss the dual system's function under the advantageuos inequity.Disadvantageous inequity means that the individual is on the side with less profit from unfair distribution,while advantageuos inequity means that the individual is on the side with more profit from unfair distribution.Based on this,we designed three behavioral experiments to study the function of the two systems in the ultimatum game decision-making process when the subjects were the responders under the condition of advantageuos inequity and disadvantageuos inequity.In Experiment 1,the cognitive resources of the subjects were manipulated by the digital working memory span task.In the ultimatum game task,subjects were faced two distribution conditions: advantageuos inequity and disadvantageuos inequity.The results show that the interaction between distribution conditions and cognitive load was significant.Under the disadvantageuos inequity,the rejection rate of the subjects under the high cognitive load was significantly higher than the low cognitive load,Although there was no significant difference between the two cognitive loads under advantageuos inequity,when the distribution ratio was 7:3,the rejection rate of high cognitive load was significantly lower than that of low cognitive load.In Experiment 2,the subjects' cognitive resources were consumed by stroop task.In the ultimatum game task,subjects were faced two distribution conditions: disadvantageuos inequity and advantageuos inequity.The results show that the interaction between distribution conditions and self-depletion was significant.Under the condition of advantageuos inequity,the rejection rate of subjects with high selfdepletion was significantly lower than that of subjects with low self-depletion.Although there was no prior significant difference in the rejection rate under different self-depletion under the overall condition of disadvantageuos inequity,but when the allocation ratio was 1:9 And 2:8,the rejection rate under high self-depletion was significantly higher than that under low self-depletion.task.Experiment 3 used high and low time pressure to limit the decision-making time of the ultimatum game task.In the ultimatum game task,subjects were faced two distribution conditions: advantageuos inequity and disadvantageuos inequity.The results show that the interaction between distribution conditions and time pressure was significant.Under the disadvantageuos inequity,the rejection rate under high time pressure was significantly higher than that under low time pressure;under the advantageuos inequity,the rejection rate under high time pressure was significantly lower than that under low time pressure.Through the results of three experiments,we can get the following conclusions.(1)Under the condition of disadvantageuos inequity,the individual's performance in the intuitive automatic system is fair preference,the performance in the prudent thinking system is self-interest maximization.(2)Under the condition of advantageuos inequity,the individual's performance in the intuitive automatic system is manifested as the maximization of self-interest,the performance of individuals under the prudent thinking system is equity preference.