CAS Key Laboratory of Brain Function and Disease and School of Life Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui, China.
PLoS One. 2012;7(6):e39619. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0039619. Epub 2012 Jun 28.
The rejection of unfair offers can be affected by both negative emotions (e.g. anger and moral disgust) and deliberate cognitive processing of behavioral consequences (e.g. concerns of maintaining social fairness and protecting personal reputation). However, whether negative emotions are sufficient to motivate this behavior is still controversial. With modified ultimatum games, a recent study (Yamagishi T, et al. (2009) Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 106:11520-11523) found that people reject unfair offers even when this behavior increases inequity, and even when they could not communicate to the proposers. Yamagishi suggested that rejection of unfair offers could occur without people's concerning of maintaining social fairness, and could be driven by negative emotions. However, as anonymity was not sufficiently guaranteed in Yamagishi's study, the rejection rates in their experiments may have been influenced by people's concerns of protecting personal reputation (reputational concerns) in addition to negative emotions; thus, it was unclear whether the rejection was driven by negative emotions, or by reputational concerns, or both. In the present study, with specific methods to ensure anonymity, the effect of reputational concerns was successfully ruled out. We found that in a private situation in which rejection could not be driven by reputational concerns, the rejection rates of unfair offers were significantly larger than zero, and in public situations in which rejection rates could be influenced by both negative emotions and reputational concerns, rejection rates were significantly higher than that in the private situation. These results, together with Yamagishi's findings, provided more complete evidence suggesting (a) that the rejection of unfair offers can be driven by negative emotions and (b) that deliberate cognitive processing of the consequences of the behavior can increase the rejection rate, which may benefit social cooperation.
不公平提议的拒绝可能受到负面情绪（如愤怒和道德厌恶）和对行为后果的刻意认知处理（如对维护社会公平和保护个人声誉的关注）的影响。然而，负面情绪是否足以激发这种行为仍存在争议。在修改后的最后通牒博弈中，一项最近的研究（Yamagishi T，等人，2009 年，Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 106：11520-11523）发现，即使这种行为增加了不公平性，即使人们无法与提议者沟通，人们也会拒绝不公平的提议。Yamagishi 认为，即使人们不关注维护社会公平，拒绝不公平的提议也可能发生，并且可能是由负面情绪驱动的。然而，由于 Yamagishi 的研究中匿名性没有得到充分保证，他们实验中的拒绝率可能除了负面情绪之外还受到人们保护个人声誉的担忧（声誉担忧）的影响；因此，不清楚拒绝是由负面情绪驱动的，还是由声誉担忧驱动的，或者两者兼而有之。在本研究中，通过确保匿名性的特定方法，成功排除了声誉担忧的影响。我们发现，在私人情况下，拒绝不会受到声誉担忧的驱动，不公平提议的拒绝率明显大于零，而在公共情况下，拒绝率可能受到负面情绪和声誉担忧的双重影响，拒绝率明显高于私人情况。这些结果与 Yamagishi 的发现一起，提供了更完整的证据表明（a）不公平提议的拒绝可以由负面情绪驱动，（b）对行为后果的刻意认知处理可以提高拒绝率，这可能有利于社会合作。
