Fairness, not Emotion, Drives Socioeconomic Decision Making

Abstract

Emotion and fairness play a key role in mediating socioeconomic decisions in humans; however, the underlying neurocognitive mechanism remains largely unknown. In this study, we explored the interplay between proposers' emotions and fairness of offer magnitudes in rational decision-making. Employing a time-bound UG paradigm, 40 (male, age: 18-20) participants were exposed to three distinct proposers' emotions (Happy, Neutral, and Disgusted) followed by one of the three offer ranges (Low, Intermediate, Maximum). Our findings show a robust influence of fairness of offer on acceptance rates, with the impact of emotions obtained only within the low offer range. The increment of the offer amount resulted in shorter reaction times, while emotional stimuli resulted in prolonged reaction times. A multilevel generalized linear model showed offer as the dominant predictor of trial-specific responses. Subsequent agglomerative clustering grouped participants into five primary clusters based on responses modulated by emotions/offers. The Drift Diffusion Model based on the clustering further corroborated our findings. Emotion-sensitive markers, including N170 and LPP, demonstrated the participants' effect on facial expressions; however, facial emotions had minimal effect on subsequent socioeconomic decisions. Our study suggests that, in general, participants gave more preference to the fairness of the offer with a slight effect of emotions in decision-making. We show that though emotion is perceived and has an effect on decision-making time, people mostly prioritise financial gain and fairness of offer. Moreover, it establishes a connection between reaction time and responses and further dives deep into individualistic decision-making processes revealing different cognitive strategies.