Be Strong Enough to Say No: Self-Affirmation Increases Rejection to Unfair Offers

Abstract

We propose that self-affirmation may endow people more psychological resources to buffer against the negative influence of rejecting unfair offers in the classic ultimatum game (UG) and further lead to a stronger tendency to reject those offers. We tested this possibility by conducting an event-related potential (ERP) study about the UG, with the ERP component P3 as an indirect indicator of psychological resources. Participants were randomly assigned to the affirmation or control condition and then completed the UG through electrophysiological recording. As expected, the behavioral data indicated that compared with unaffirmed ones, affirmed participants were more likely to reject unfair UG offers; the electrophysiological data indicated that compared to the unaffirmed, affirmed participants showed a greater P3 in response to the presentation of an offer. These findings suggest that psychological resources may play a role in rejecting others beyond the fairness concern, and additionally shed light on the neural mechanisms underlying self-affirmation.

Self-affirmation enhances the processing of uncertainty: An event-related potential study

“…Otherwise, we should have also observed an enlarged FRN among those affirmed participants when negative feedback was given in our study. In one of our previous studies (Gu et al, 2016), we proposed that increased cognitive resources explain the effect of self-affirmation on the processing of unfair offers in a social decision-making situation. That is, self-affirmation endows more cognitive resources in evaluating an unfavorable outcome, which manifests on the ERPs elicited by outcome feedback.…”

“…First, the difference wave approach can remove common underlying components that are insensitive to the win/loss manipulation (Bress, Smith, Foti, Klein, & Hajcak, 2012) and at the same time minimize potential overlaps between the FRN and other ERP components, particularly the P3 (Hajcak, Moser, Holroyd, & Simons, 2007;Holroyd & Krigolson, 2007). Second, we have successfully used the difference approach in relevant studies (e.g., Gu et al, 2016;Zhu, Gu, Wu, & Luo, 2015;Zhu et al, 2018). Thus, we created Bnegative-positive^and Bambiguous-positive^difference waves by subtracting the ERPs on positive outcome trials from the ERPs on negative and ambiguous outcome trials, respectively.…”

“…For instance, Cascio et al (2016) showed that self-affirmation successfully helps participants counteract depletion of their cognitive resources caused by a heightened cognitive load. Gu et al (2016) demonstrated that self-affirmation enables more cognitive resources during the processing of outcome in social decision-making, as reflected by greater ERP signals.…”

“…We conducted the current study in China. Our previous studies have demonstrated that familial self-affirmation rather than individual self-affirmation is effective for Chinese participants (Cai, Sedikides, & Jiang, 2013;Gu et al, 2016). Hence, we asked half of the participants to affirm their familial self by choosing a value that is important for both themselves as well as for their family, and explain why that value is important (affirmation group).…”

Reducing Discrimination and Fostering Prosociality Towards Ex‐Prisoners in Nigeria and the United States

“…Outside the North American context (U.S. and Canada), some work has been conducted in Europe, such as the United Kingdom (e.g., Armitage, Harris, Hepton, & Napper, ; Armitage & Rowe, ; Harris, Harris, & Miles, ; Sparks, Jessop, Chapman, & Holmes, ; van Prooijen, Sparks, & Jessop, ), the Netherlands (e.g., de Jong, Jellesma, Koomen, & de Jong, ; Thomaes, Bushman, de Castro, & Reijntjes, ), and France (e.g., Taillandier‐Schmitt, Esnard, & Mokounkolo, ). However, only very sparse research exists that has investigated self‐affirmation interventions in non‐Western cultures, such as China (e.g., Cai, Sedikides, & Jiang, ; Gu et al., ) or countries in Africa.…”