Neural responses to unfairness and fairness depend on self-contribution to the income.
Self-contribution to the income (individual achievement) was an important factor which needs to be taken into individual's fairness considerations. This study aimed at elucidating the modulation of self-contribution to the income, on recipient's responses to unfairness in the Ultimatum Game. Eighteen participants were scanned while they were playing an adapted version of the Ultimatum Game as responders. Before splitting money, the proposer and the participant (responder) played the ball-guessing game. The responder's contribution to the income was manipulated by both the participant's and the proposer's accuracy in the ball-guessing game. It turned out that the participants more often rejected unfair offers and gave lower fairness ratings when they played a more important part in the earnings. At the neural level, anterior insula, anterior cingulate cortex, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and temporoparietal junction showed greater activities to unfairness when self-contribution increased, whereas ventral striatum and medial orbitofrontal gyrus showed higher activations to fair (vs unfair) offers in the other-contributed condition relative to the other two. Besides, the activations of right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex during unfair offers showed positive correlation with rejection rates in the self-contributed condition. These findings shed light on the significance of self-contribution in fairness-related social decision-making processes.
['Guo|Xiuyan|X|', 'Zheng|Li|L|', 'Cheng|Xuemei|X|', 'Chen|Menghe|M|', 'Zhu|Lei|L|', 'Li|Jianqi|J|', 'Chen|Luguang|L|', 'Yang|Zhiliang|Z|']
D001921:Brain D001931:Brain Mapping D003657:Decision Making D004644:Emotions D005260:Female D005717:Games, Experimental D006801:Humans D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted D007182:Income D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging D008297:Male D010100:Oxygen D012059:Rejection, Psychology D055815:Young Adult
unfairness self-contribution ACC AI DLPFC TPJ