The Social Bright Side of

Self-Control Failure:

Between Self-Interest and Reciprocity

Eliran Halali

Yoella Bereby-Meyer

Nachshon Meiran

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel

Reciprocity

The tendency to respond in kind when interacting with others

(Guala, 2012):

Positive reciprocity: “nice” corresponds to nice actions

Negative reciprocity: “mean” corresponds to mean actions

Reciprocity is a universal norm that most societies endorse

(Gouldner, 1960).

It motivates and regulates an exchange patterns that prevents

exploitation.

By rewarding decent behavior and punishing indecent behavior,

reciprocity enables one to sustain cooperation (Alexander, 1987).

Strong Reciprocity The current study focuses on strong reciprocity:

the willingness to reciprocate, even when it is costly,

and provides neither present nor future material rewards (Gintis, 2000).

There is ample evidence of reciprocity in everyday life and in the lab (e.g., Fehr et al., 2002).

Little is known, however, about possible factors that might affect

reciprocity and specifically,

its interplay with rational, self-interest motives.

We examine the role of cognitive-control in reciprocal behavior

Is the preference for reciprocity:

a deliberative (system 2) cognitive-control act

or

an automatic (system 1) act?

Experiment 1:

Negative Reciprocity

in the Ultimatum-Game

Halali, Bereby-Meyer & Meiran, in press, JEP-General

Ultimatum game (Guth et al., 1982)

Two players are randomly assigned to two different roles

One player proposes how to split a given sum of money

The other player responds

If the responder accepts:

The money is divided according to the proposed division

If the responder rejects:

Neither player receives anything

Ultimatum game

The rational model prediction:

Responders should

accept any proposal

greater than zero

Economic Self-Interest

Behavioral findings:

Responders often

reject profitable, but

unequal, offers

(Camerer, 2003)

Reciprocity

The “irrational” rejection of unfair offers is correlated with:

Negative feelings

(e.g., Pillutla & Murnighan, 1996)

Increased activity in brain regions associated with negative feelings

(e.g., Sanfey et al., 2003)

Acceptance of unfair offers is associated with:

Emotion regulation strategies

(e.g., Bereby-Meyer, Moran, Halali, & Schweitzer, 2013)

Increased activity in brain regions involved in emotion regulation

(Tabibnia et al. 2008)

When Rationality and Reciprocity Conflict:

The Case of Unfair UG Offers

Unfair UG offers induce a conflict in the responder between

deliberative motives and affective motives

(“accept the offer”) (“reject the offer”)

We can model this by a dual system approach to decision making: (e.g., Kahneman, 2011; Loewenstein & O’Donoghue, 2005)

Behavior may be best understood as an interplay between

emotional and deliberative processes

Emotions have primary control of behavior (e.g., Bechara & Damasio, 2005)

Deliberative actions are required to maintain

reasoning and rational thought (e.g., Vohs, 2006)

Is reciprocity an automatic behavior?

Moral decisions (e.g., fairness and cooperation) result from reasoning and

deliberating processes

Automatic self-interest is the primary motive,

which needs to be constrained by inhibition (i.e., Moore & Loewenstein, 2004)

Recent evidence suggests that reciprocity develops with age

(e.g., Bereby‐Meyer & Fiks, in press)

Induced functional "lesions" in a brain area associated with the

inhibition of prepotent responses, led to an increased acceptance rate

of unfair offers (i.e., placebo; Knoch et al., 2006)

Is reciprocity a deliberative behavior?

In the present study we tried to decide between these two contradicting

propositions for reciprocity considerations:

We adopted Baumeister and his colleagues' self-control theory

(i.e., Ego-Depletion; Baumeister et al., 1998)

This theory was recently extended to cognitive control in general (Schmeichel, 2007)

We manipulated the availability of cognitive control resources,

in order to reveal the automatic behavior

The current study:

The Role of Cognitive-Control

Cognitive-control relies on a limited resource

This limited resource gets depleted when one tries to inhibit

competing behaviors, urges, or desires

just as a muscle tires after performing an effortful action

An initial act of cognitive-control impairs subsequent acts of

cognitive-control, even in unrelated tasks–

a state called Ego-Depletion

Individual decision making:

Ego-depletion was found to impair the deliberative system, resulting

in enhanced of intuitive reasoning and irrational thought (e.g., Vohs, 2006)

Ego-Depletion (Baumeister et al., 1998)

Social decision making – Reciprocity Considerations

Contradicting Predictions:

1. The automatic proposition:

Ego-depletion reduces the capabilities of the deliberative system

to down-regulate affective processes (e.g., Sheppes & Meiran, 2008)

Ego depletion intensifies feelings and urges in response to

emotional and tempting stimuli (Vohs, Baumeister et al., submitted)

Prediction: Increased rejection rate of unfair offers

2. The deliberative proposition:

Ego-depletion increases dishonest behaviors in ethical decisions,

i.e., enhances economically self-interested responses (e.g., Mead et al., 2009)

Prediction: Reduced rejection rate of unfair offers

Ego Depletion

Experiment 1: Method

Participants: N=54 female undergraduates

Procedure: Ego-Depletion manipulation (Mead et al., 2009)

20 trials of the Stroop (1935) task: A classic automatic processing

task in which people have to judge the color of words

In the incongruent trials the words are color names that don’t

match the color of the ink. Therefore, participants have to

suppress reading the words. Suppression means self control.

Depletion – Incongruent No depletion - Congruent

Green Green

Procedure: The UG Task

16 independent “one-shot” trials of the UG (Harle & Sanfey, 2007)

4 sec

… received 70 NIS

you received 30 NIS

… received nothing

you received nothing

Reveal

Outcome

Reveal

Offer

… gets 70 NIS

you get 30 NIS

Up to 10 sec Reveal

Partner

4 sec

face

photo

Experiment 1: Method

Experiment 1: Results

A significant Condition x Fairness interaction: F(4,176)=2.80, p=.028

P=.055

Halali, Bereby-Meyer & Meiran, in press, JEP-General

Experiment 1: Summary

Support for the automatic (system 1) proposition for reciprocity

In response to non-cooperative behaviors (i.e., unfair UG offers),

a shortage of cognitive control resources resulted in

increased negative reciprocity (i.e., costly punishing behavior).

People became more impatient when they were treated unfairly

Appling this logic to positive reciprocity:

In response to cooperative behaviors,

a shortage of cognitive control resources should be resulted in

increased positive reciprocity (i.e., costly rewarding behavior),

People should become more generous

Support for this suggestion will demonstrate

an exceptionally rare social benefit for self-control failure

Experiment 2:

Positive Reciprocity

in the Trust-Game

Halali, Bereby-Meyer & Meiran, in press, JEP-General

Trust game (Berg et al., 1995)

Two players are randomly assigned to two different roles:

One player is the investor

The other player is the receiver

The investor can keep a certain amount of money or

split it with the receiver (i.e., investing it)

The experimenter triples any amount the investor transfers

to the receiver

The receiver can keep the entire amount or

can send some or all of it, back to the investor

Trust game

The rational model prediction:

Receiver should not

send any money back

to the investor

Economic Self-Interest

Behavioral findings:

Receivers usually

return non-trivial

amounts of money

(Camerer, 2003)

Reciprocity

When Rationality and Reciprocity Conflict:

The Case of Trusting TG Investments

The “irrational” return of money following trusting investments

is correlated with:

Positive feelings

(e.g., Offerman, 2002)

Increased activity in brain regions associated with positive feelings (e.g., van den Bos et al., 2009)

Returning less money in response to trusting investments is

associated with:

Emotion regulation strategy

(e.g., Bereby-Meyer, Moran, Halali, & Schweitzer, 2013)

Trusting TG investments induce a conflict in the receiver between

deliberative motives and affective motives

(“not returning money”) (“returning money”)

Ego-depletion reduces the capabilities of the deliberative system to

down-regulate affective processes (e.g., Sheppes & Meiran, 2008)

Ego depletion intensifies feelings and urges in response to

emotional and tempting stimuli (Vohs, Baumeister et al., submitted)

Prediction: An increased amount of money will be sent back

following highly trusting investments

Is positive reciprocity an automatic

behavior?

Participants: : 2A: 42 female, 2B: 38 male undergraduates

Procedure: Ego-Depletion manipulation

Experiment 2A: (Baumeister et al., 1998)

crossing off instances of a specific Hebrew vowel

(equal to the English letter ‘e’) from a meaningless text

No Depletion – easy-rules –

crossing off every instance of the specific vowel

Depletion – difficult-rules –

crossing off the specific vowel only when it is

at least two extra letters away from another vowel

Experiment 2B: The same Stroop (1935) task as in Experiment 1

“eat”

“vowel”

“other”

Experiment 2A & 2B: Method

X

Procedure: The TG Task - 24 independent “one-shot” trials of the TG

Reveal

Partner

face

photo

Reveal

Investment

… keeps 10 NIS

transfers 40 NIS

… gets ___ NIS

you get ___ NIS

Reveal

Outcome

you have

120 NIS

Reveal

Sum of Money Reveal

Response Box

Experiment 2: Results

Experiment 2: Results

A significant Condition x Trustfulness interaction: F(4,280)=8.10, p<.001

P=.005

Halali, Bereby-Meyer & Meiran, in press, JEP-General

Summary:

In two independent social exchange situations in which a conflict exists

between Rationality and Reciprocity considerations:

A shortage of cognitive control resources resulted in:

Increased negative reciprocity (i.e., costly punishing behavior)

in response to non-cooperative behaviors in the UG,

Increased positive reciprocity (i.e., costly rewarding behavior)

in response to cooperative behaviors in the TG

Reciprocity considerations operate more automatically than rational

considerations

Rational considerations depend on the availability of limited cognitive

control resources

Thanks!

ISF - Israel Science Foundation grant number 1337/11

Contact information: halali@bgu.ac.il