TY - JOUR A1 - Riepl, Korbinian A1 - Mussel, Patrick A1 - Osinsky, Roman A1 - Hewig, Johannes T1 - Influences of State and Trait Affect on Behavior, Feedback-Related Negativity, and P3b in the Ultimatum Game JF - PLoS One N2 - The present study investigates how different emotions can alter social bargaining behavior. An important paradigm to study social bargaining is the Ultimatum Game. There, a proposer gets a pot of money and has to offer part of it to a responder. If the responder accepts, both players get the money as proposed by the proposer. If he rejects, none of the players gets anything. Rational choice models would predict that responders accept all offers above 0. However, evidence shows that responders typically reject a large proportion of all unfair offers. We analyzed participants’ behavior when they played the Ultimatum Game as responders and simultaneously collected electroencephalogram data in order to quantify the feedback-related negativity and P3b components. We induced state affect (momentarily emotions unrelated to the task) via short movie clips and measured trait affect (longer-lasting emotional dispositions) via questionnaires. State happiness led to increased acceptance rates of very unfair offers. Regarding neurophysiology, we found that unfair offers elicited larger feedback-related negativity amplitudes than fair offers. Additionally, an interaction of state and trait affect occurred: high trait negative affect (subsuming a variety of aversive mood states) led to increased feedback-related negativity amplitudes when participants were in an angry mood, but not if they currently experienced fear or happiness. We discuss that increased rumination might be responsible for this result, which might not occur, however, when people experience happiness or fear. Apart from that, we found that fair offers elicited larger P3b components than unfair offers, which might reflect increased pleasure in response to fair offers. Moreover, high trait negative affect was associated with decreased P3b amplitudes, potentially reflecting decreased motivation to engage in activities. We discuss implications of our results in the light of theories and research on depression and anxiety. KW - emotions KW - ultimatum game KW - fear KW - happiness KW - behavior KW - decision making KW - electroencephalography KW - event-related potentials Y1 - 2016 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-147386 VL - 7 IS - 11 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Mussel, Patrick A1 - Göritz, Anja S. A1 - Hewig, Johannes T1 - The value of a smile: Facial expression affects ultimatum-game responses JF - Judgment and Decision Making N2 - In social interaction, the facial expression of an opponent contains information that may influence the interaction. We asked whether facial expression affects decision-making in the ultimatum game. In this two-person game, the proposer divides a sum of money into two parts, one for each player, and then the responder decides whether to accept the offer or reject it. Rejection means that neither player gets any money. Results of a large-sample study support our hypothesis that offers from proposers with a smiling facial expression are more often accepted, compared to a neutral facial expression. Moreover, we found lower acceptance rates for offers from proposers with an angry facial expression. KW - ultimatum game KW - emotions KW - decision-making KW - facial expressions Y1 - 2013 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-129639 VL - 8 IS - 3 ER -