Counterfactual comparison modulates fairness consideration in the mini‐ultimatum game: An event‐related potentials study

Existing literature on the mini‐ultimatum game indicates that counterfactual comparison between chosen and unchosen alternatives is of great importance for individual's fairness consideration. However, it is still unclear how counterfactual comparison influences the electrophysiological responses to unfair chosen offers. In conjunction with event‐related potentials’ (ERPs) technique, the current study aimed to explore the issue by employing a modified version of the mini‐ultimatum game where a fixed set of two alternatives (unfair offer vs. fair alternative, unfair vs. hyperfair alternative, unfair offer vs. hyperunfair alternative) was presented before the chosen offer. The behavioral results showed that participants were more likely to accept unfair chosen offers when the unchosen alternative was hyperunfair than when the unchosen alternative was fair or hyperfair. The ERPs results showed that the feedback‐related negativity (FRN) elicited by unfair chosen offers was insensitive to the type of unchosen alternative when correcting for possible overlap with other components. In contrast, unfair chosen offers elicited larger P300 amplitudes when the unchosen alternative was hyperunfair than when the unchosen alternative was fair or hyperfair. These findings suggest that counterfactual comparison may take effect at later stages of fairness consideration as reflected by the P300.     

Are some video games associated with more life interference and psychopathology than others? Comparing massively multiplayer online role‐playing games with other forms of video game

Massively multiplayer online role‐playing games (MMORPGs) are a type of video game that is considered to have particular potential to be associated with life interference and psychopathology when played frequently and intensively. This study sought to compare players of MMORPGs with players of other types of video game in terms of problematic use, life interference, and levels of psychopathology. An international sample of 1,945 video game players completed a series of questionnaires online. While MMORPG players reported increased rates of problematic use and life interference compared with non‐MMORPG players, there were no differences in levels of psychopathology. Differences between MMORPG players and non‐MMORPG players appeared to be associated with the increased amounts of time that MMORPG players played for: The amount of time spent playing appeared to mediate the relationships between type of game played and each of the problematic use and life interference variables. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

Individualistic attitudes toward attractive rewards in older people: An experimental study using ultimatum games

This study used an ultimatum game to test the hypothesis that older individuals make more selfish offers when bargaining for highly attractive rewards, regardless of the impacts of others' responses on reward size. Both older and younger individuals separately participated in the experiment and made offers as allocators. The effects of four factors (age, certainty of the allocators' own reward depending on the recipient's response, the recipient's response, and type of rewards to be shared) on participants' offers and expectations of recipients' replies were observed. Older participants demanded higher shares for themselves than younger participants, even under the low certainty condition in the highly attractive reward scenario. Particularly in this scenario, older participants increased their portions immediately after receiving rejections. Moreover, they consistently expected the recipients to accept their offers regardless of the proposed distribution amount or bargaining conditions. It was implied that the high attractiveness of the rewards made it difficult for older individuals to predict the recipient's view of their proposals and thus contributed to them making selfish proposals.     

Estimation and visualization of confusability matrices from adaptive measurement data

We present a simple but effective method based on Luce’s choice axiom [Luce, R.D. (1959). Individual choice behavior: A theoretical analysis. New York: John Wiley & Sons] for consistent estimation of the pairwise confusabilities of items in a multiple-choice recognition task with arbitrarily chosen choice-sets. The method combines the exact (non-asymptotic) Bayesian way of assessing uncertainty with the unbiasedness emphasized in the classical frequentist approach.We apply the method to data collected using an adaptive computer game designed for prevention of reading disability. A player’s estimated confusability of phonemes (or more accurately, phoneme-grapheme connections) and larger units of language is visualized in an easily understood way with color cues and explicit indication of the accuracy of the estimates. Visualization of learning-related changes in the player’s performance is considered.The empirical validity of the choice axiom is evaluated using the game data itself. The axiom appears to hold reasonably well although a small systematic violation is observable for the smallest choice-set sizes.     

A Bayesian-optimal principle for learner-friendly adaptation in learning games

Adaptive learning games should provide opportunities for the student to learn as well as motivate playing until goals have been reached. In this paper, we give a mathematically rigorous treatment of the problem in the framework of Bayesian decision theory. To quantify the opportunities for learning, we assume that the learning tasks that yield the most information about the current skills of the student, while being desirable for measurement in their own right, would also be among those that are efficient for learning. Indeed, optimization of the expected information gain appears to naturally avoid tasks that are exceedingly demanding or exceedingly easy as their results are predictable and thus uninformative. Still, tasks that are efficient for learning may be experienced as too challenging, and the resulting failures can lower motivation. Therefore, in addition to quantifying the expected informational benefit for learning of any prospective task to be presented next, we also model the expected motivational cost of its presentation, measured simply as the estimated probability of failure in our example model. We propose a “learner-friendly” adaptation algorithm that chooses the learning tasks by optimizing the expected benefit divided by the expected cost. We apply this algorithm to a Rasch-like student model implemented within a real-world application and present initial results of a pilot experiment.     

Playing the game the child allots

This paper explores the relationship between play and interpretative verbalization in child analysis. Through examination of a clinical case, the paper distinguishes between two different modes of interpretative interventions in play. It is the contention of the paper that the analyst’s capacity to tolerate tension and respond to the roles the child assigns him widens the area of play, facilitating a space for thinking through. Interpretation is formulated in two distinct ways: (a) interpreting from the context of the roles the analyst assumes within play, respecting the games and facilitating the patient’s understanding; (b) interpreting at a distance from play, on the one hand distinguishing the area of play, and on the other hand analyzing that which occurs verbally and non‐verbally.     

Framing the Ultimatum Game: Gender differences and autonomic responses

The present study aimed at investigating whether the way offers are framed in the Ultimatum Game (UG) affects behavioral and autonomic responses in men and women. The “I give you” and “I take” expressions were used as gain and loss frames, respectively. Skin conductance and heart rate were recorded as indices of autonomic activation in response to unfair, mid‐value, and fair offers. Acceptance rates were higher in men than in women under the gain frame. Moreover, men showed higher acceptance rates under the gain than under the loss frame with mid‐value offers, whereas women's choices were not affected by frame. On the physiological level, men produced differential autonomic response patterns during decision‐making when offers were presented under gain and loss framing. The “I take” frame, by acting as a loss frame, elicited in men the characteristic defensive response pattern that is evoked by aversive stimulation, in which increases in skin conductance are coupled with increases in heart rate. On the other hand, the “I give you” frame, by acting as a gain frame, elicited in men increases in skin conductance associated with prevailing heart rate deceleratory responses, reflecting a state of enhanced attention and orienting. In contrast, women's autonomic reactivity was not affected by frame, consistent with behavioral results. Phasic changes in heart rate were crucial in revealing differential functional significance of skin conductance responses under different frames in men, thus questioning the assumption that this autonomic measure can be used as an index of negative emotional arousal in the UG.     

The demotion of alpha‐homo sapiens: Consciousness,punctuated equilibrium,and the laws of the game

The result of using Eigen and Winkler's LIFE/DEATH GAME to integrate Rashevksy's social physics and Rapoport's mathematical game theory, synchrony removes the arbitrariness from problems of ethics. It focuses on the primary conflicts between strategies that optimize individual survival and those that optimize survival of groups. According to synchrony, cooperation is an optimal strategy, not because cooperation conforms to some ethical pattern, but because the evolution of our technical societies has made the alternatives to cooperation potentially lethal at all levels of human interaction. Eigen and Winkler offer hypercycles as a possible method of resolving problems that conventional wisdom has labeled “irreconcilable differences.”

Combined with the findings of clinical psychologist Paul Meehl and cultural anthropologist Magoroh Maruyama, Eigen and Winkler's LIFE/ DEATH GAME indicates that a pattern of reasoning, called Alpha‐H, is not only a formidable obstacle to cooperation, it threatens contemporary societies with extinction through violent conflicts, social upheavals economic collapse or all three together.

The Demotion of Alpha‐H argues that an inability to deal constructively with change and/or diversity is Alpha‐H's fatal flaw. And the removal of gender bias toward opponent processes reasoning is a crucial step toward correcting it. The key concept is the LIFE/DEATH GAME.     

Vigilant Self‐regulation and Costly Punishment in Public Goods Situations

Applying regulatory focus theory to the context of social dilemma situations, the present research demonstrates that individual differences in vigilant, prevention‐focused self‐regulation predict the tendency to invest private resources to punish uncooperative interaction partners (costly punishment), a behaviour that typically has strong positive effects on the collective level of cooperation. Analyses further support the distinctiveness of the vigilance system proposed in regulatory focus theory (prevention focus) in comparison with general defensive inhibitory tendencies (measured with Carver and White's Behavioral Inhibition System scale). Results document that individual differences in prevention‐focused self‐regulation but not differences in general defensive inhibitory tendencies are positively related to costly punishment. In sum, the findings indicate that vigilant, prevention‐focused self‐regulation plays a crucial role in the context of sanctions that enforce cooperation. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Revisions and Regret: The Cost of Changing your Mind

Decision reversals often imply improved decisions. Yet, people show a strong resistance against changing their minds. These are well‐established findings, which suggest that changed decisions carry a subjective cost, perhaps by being more strongly regretted. Three studies were conducted to explore participants' regret when making reversible decisions and to test the hypothesis that changing one's mind will increase post‐outcome regret. The first two studies employed the Ultimatum game and the Trust game. The third study used a variant of the Monty Hall problem. All games were conducted by individual participants playing interactively against a computer. The outcomes were designed to capture a common characteristic of real‐life decisions: they varied from rather negative to fairly positive, and for every outcome, it was possible to imagine both more and less profitable outcomes. In all experiments, those who changed their minds reported much stronger post‐outcome regret than those who did not change, even if the final outcomes were equally good (Experiments 2 and 3) or better (Experiment 1).This finding was not because of individual differences with respect to gender, tendency to regret, or tendency to maximize. Previous studies have found that those who change from a correct to wrong option regret more than those who select a wrong option directly. This study indicates that this finding is a special case of a more general phenomenon: changing one's mind seems to come with a cost, even when one ends up with favorable outcomes. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.