Ultimatum Game
The ultimatum game is a two-player bargaining task. One player proposes how to split a sum of money and the other accepts or rejects the proposal. If the second player rejects, both players receive nothing. Because rejection costs the rejecter something, turning down a lopsided split is read as a fairness verdict with a price attached, and the rate at which people reject unfair offers is the standard measure of sensitivity to fairness. The game is a method, not a research claim, and it is used on this site because one study read for it found that incidental emotions change how often unfair offers are refused.
What it is
The structure is simple. A proposer is given a sum and offers part of it to a responder. The responder can accept, in which case the sum is divided as proposed, or reject, in which case neither player is paid. A player concerned only with money should accept any positive offer, since something is better than nothing. People do not behave that way: unfair offers are often rejected, and the researchers use the rejection rate as a window onto what players treat as fair.
The task was introduced in 1982 by Werner Güth, Rolf Schmittberger and Bernd Schwarz in a paper titled An experimental analysis of ultimatum bargaining. The vault confirmed the title and the year through a search listing and did not open the paper, so the originator is recorded here at medium confidence and nothing about its findings is stated on this page.
In effect
Cuizhen Liu, Jing Wen Chai and Rongjun Yu used the game in three experiments, reported in Scientific Reports in 2016, to ask whether an emotion unrelated to the offer changes the verdict. They induced seven emotions: disgust, sadness, anger, fear, happiness, surprise and a neutral state. They then measured how often participants rejected unfair offers.
Disgust, sadness, anger and fear all increased rejection of unfair offers. Happiness and surprise did not produce the increase. The authors interpret the pattern as general to negative emotion and not specific to one of them: negative emotions may make people focus more on the negative aspects of a situation, which heightens sensitivity to fairness.
This is the nearest evidence the vault holds to the question of whether a good mood makes a price look fair. The result is asymmetric. Negative emotions raised rejection of unfair offers, and happiness did not. On the evidence of this study alone, the most that can be said of a good mood is that it fails to make an unfair offer look worse.
What it does not say
An ultimatum offer is a split between two people, with one of them able to punish the other at a cost. A price on a shelf is set by a seller who is usually absent, and the buyer who finds it unfair can walk away without losing anything. The game therefore measures fairness sensitivity in a setting that differs from shopping in who is present, what refusal costs and what the alternative is.
The study read here was an abstract-level reading of a single paper. Its three experiments and seven emotions were not examined for sample sizes, payments or the way each emotion was induced, so the results should be read as the authors' summary. The researchers describe a pattern across negative emotions, and the vault holds no replication of it.
Nothing on this page claims that people in a good mood judge prices fairer. The article that cites the game reports that no study found asked shoppers in an induced mood whether a price was fair.
Sources
- Güth, W., Schmittberger, R., & Schwarz, B. (1982). An experimental analysis of ultimatum bargaining. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization. Title and year confirmed from a search listing; paper not opened.
- Liu, C., Chai, J. W., & Yu, R. (2016). Negative incidental emotions augment fairness sensitivity. Scientific Reports, 6, 24892. doi:10.1038/srep24892.