IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0125806.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Beauty Matters: Social Preferences in a Three-Person Ultimatum Game

Author

Listed:
  • Qingguo Ma
  • Yue Hu

Abstract

Preference for beauty is human nature, as previous behavior studies have supported the notion of “beauty premium” in which attractive people were more easily to get promoted and receive higher salaries. In the present study, 29 males were recruited to participate in a three-person ultimatum game (UG) including a proposer, a responder and a powerless third player. Each subject, playing as the responder, had to decide whether to accept an offer from the allocator both for himself and a female third person. We aimed to elucidate how the facial attractiveness of the female subject affected the male subjects’ fairness and decision-making in social exchanges. Frontal feedback-related negativity (FRN) in response to four offers in an attractive-face condition revealed no significant differences between offers; however, when the companion was an unattractive female, an “unfair/fair” offer, which assigned a lower share to the responder and a fair share to the third player, elicited the largest FRN. Furthermore, when the third player was offered the smallest amount (“fair/unfair” offer), a larger FRN was generated in an attractive-face condition than unattractive-face condition. In the “unfair/fair” offer condition in which subjects received a smaller allocation than the third person, the beauty of their female counterparts attenuated subjects’ aversion to inequality, resulting in a less negative FRN in the frontal region and an increased acceptance ratio. However, the influence of the third player’s facial attractiveness only affected the early evaluation stage: late P300 was found to be immune to the “beauty premium”. Under the two face conditions, P300 was smallest following an “unfair/fair” offer, whereas the amplitudes in the other three offer conditions exhibited no significant differences. In addition, the differentiated neural features of processing facial attractiveness were also determined and indexed by four event-related potentials (ERP) components: N170, frontal N1, N2 and late positive potentials (LPPs).

Suggested Citation

  • Qingguo Ma & Yue Hu, 2015. "Beauty Matters: Social Preferences in a Three-Person Ultimatum Game," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(5), pages 1-17, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0125806
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0125806
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0125806
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0125806&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0125806?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jia Li & Xiaolin Zhou, 2014. "Sex, Attractiveness, and Third-Party Punishment in Fairness Consideration," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(4), pages 1-6, April.
    2. Ernst Fehr & Klaus M. Schmidt, 1999. "A Theory of Fairness, Competition, and Cooperation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 114(3), pages 817-868.
    3. Rongjun Yu & Wu Zhou & Xiaolin Zhou, 2011. "Rapid Processing of Both Reward Probability and Reward Uncertainty in the Human Anterior Cingulate Cortex," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 6(12), pages 1-7, December.
    4. Solnick, Sara J. & Schweitzer, Maurice E., 1999. "The Influence of Physical Attractiveness and Gender on Ultimatum Game Decisions," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 79(3), pages 199-215, September.
    5. Ernst Fehr & Urs Fischbacher, 2003. "The nature of human altruism," Nature, Nature, vol. 425(6960), pages 785-791, October.
    6. Yin Wu & Jie Hu & Eric van Dijk & Marijke C Leliveld & Xiaolin Zhou, 2012. "Brain Activity in Fairness Consideration during Asset Distribution: Does the Initial Ownership Play a Role?," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(6), pages 1-9, June.
    7. Hamermesh, Daniel S & Biddle, Jeff E, 1994. "Beauty and the Labor Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(5), pages 1174-1194, December.
    8. Qiuling Luo & Chen Qu, 2013. "Comparison Enhances Size Sensitivity: Neural Correlates of Outcome Magnitude Processing," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(8), pages 1-9, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Póvoa, Angela Cristiane Santos & Pech, Wesley & Viacava, Juan José Camou & Schwartz, Marcos Tadeu, 2020. "Is the beauty premium accessible to all? An experimental analysis," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    2. Lyudmyla Starostyuk & Kay-Yut Chen & Edmund L. Prater, 2023. "Do looks matter in supply chain contracting? An experimental study," Business Economics, Palgrave Macmillan;National Association for Business Economics, vol. 58(1), pages 9-23, January.
    3. Du, Ninghua & Song, Fei & Cadsby, C. Bram, 2022. "You cannot judge a book by its cover: Evidence from a laboratory experiment on recognizing generosity from facial information," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 100(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mengyuan Zhou, 2022. "Does the Source of Inheritance Matter in Bequest Attitudes? Evidence from Japan," Journal of Family and Economic Issues, Springer, vol. 43(4), pages 867-887, December.
    2. Sylvie Thoron, 2016. "Morality Beyond Social Preferences: Smithian Sympathy, Social Neuroscience and the Nature of Social Consciousness [La moralité au delà des préférences sociales. La sympathie Smithienne, les neurosc," Post-Print hal-01645043, HAL.
    3. Mengyuan Zhou, 2019. "The Effect of the Source of Inheritance on Bequest Attitudes: Evidence from Japan," Keio-IES Discussion Paper Series 2019-018, Institute for Economics Studies, Keio University.
    4. Christian Hilbe & Moshe Hoffman & Martin A. Nowak, 2015. "Cooperate without Looking in a Non-Repeated Game," Games, MDPI, vol. 6(4), pages 1-15, September.
    5. Calabuig, Vicente & Fatas, Enrique & Olcina, Gonzalo & Rodriguez-Lara, Ismael, 2016. "Carry a big stick, or no stick at all," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 153-171.
    6. Brañas-Garza, Pablo & Jorrat, Diego & Alfonso-Costillo, Antonio & Espín, Antonio M. & Garcia, Teresa & Kovářík, Jaromír, 2020. "Exposure to the Covid-19 pandemic and generosity," MPRA Paper 103389, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Jonathan D. Cohen, 2005. "The Vulcanization of the Human Brain: A Neural Perspective on Interactions Between Cognition and Emotion," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 19(4), pages 3-24, Fall.
    8. Parrett, Matt, 2015. "Beauty and the feast: Examining the effect of beauty on earnings using restaurant tipping data," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 34-46.
    9. Niclas Berggren & Henrik Jordahl & Panu Poutvaara, 2010. "The Right Look: Conservative Politicians Look Better and their Voters Reward it," CESifo Working Paper Series 3310, CESifo.
    10. Gächter, Simon & Herrmann, Benedikt, 2011. "The limits of self-governance when cooperators get punished: Experimental evidence from urban and rural Russia," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 55(2), pages 193-210, February.
    11. Bartoš, Vojtěch, 2021. "Seasonal scarcity and sharing norms," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 185(C), pages 303-316.
    12. Grossman, Philip J. & Eckel, Catherine & Komai, Mana & Zhan, Wei, 2019. "It pays to be a man: Rewards for leaders in a coordination game," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 161(C), pages 197-215.
    13. Cárdenas Juan Camilo & Casas-Casas Andrés & Méndez Nathalie Méndez, 2014. "The Hidden Face of Justice: Fairness, Discrimination and Distribution in Transitional Justice Processes," Peace Economics, Peace Science, and Public Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 20(1), pages 33-60, January.
    14. M. Christian Lehmann, 2022. "Fairness preferences as a cause of inefficient war," Journal of Behavioral Economics for Policy, Society for the Advancement of Behavioral Economics (SABE), vol. 6(1), pages 33-36, December.
    15. Helmut Dietl & Anil Özdemir & Andrew Rendall, 2018. "The Role of Physical Attractiveness in Tennis TV-Viewership," Working Papers 376, University of Zurich, Department of Business Administration (IBW).
    16. Xiaofeng Wang & Xiaojie Chen & Long Wang, 2020. "Evolution of egalitarian social norm by resource management," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(1), pages 1-16, January.
    17. Tünde Paál & Tamás Bereczkei, 2015. "Punishment as a Means of Competition: Implications for Strong Reciprocity Theory," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(3), pages 1-14, March.
    18. Ohdaira, Tetsushi, 2017. "Characteristics of the evolution of cooperation by the probabilistic peer-punishment based on the difference of payoff," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 77-83.
    19. Guererk, Oezguer & Rockenbach, Bettina & Wolff, Irenaeus, 2010. "The effects of punishment in dynamic public-good games," MPRA Paper 22097, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. András Molnár & Christophe Heintz, 2016. "Beliefs About People’s Prosociality Eliciting predictions in dictator games," CEU Working Papers 2016_1, Department of Economics, Central European University.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0125806. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.