An evaluation of the Ultimatum Game as a measure of irritability and anger.

The Ultimatum Game is an effective tool for understanding how social decision-making is influenced by emotions in both research and clinical settings. Previous findings have shown that the Ultimatum Game can evoke negative emotions, especially anger and aggression. In a sample of non-clinical adults (N = 143) we evaluated the sensitivity of an anger-infused version of the Ultimatum Game to individual differences in anger and irritability. Findings showed significant relationships between anger and aggressive behaviors in the Ultimatum game, but no association between irritability and aggressive behavior were observed. This indicates that the anger-infused Ultimatum Game is a promising method for studying individual differences in trait anger and anger expression. However, the relationship between decision-making in the anger-infused Ultimatum Game and irritability is less straight forward and needs further investigation. Therefore, when studying the behavioral responses of irritability, it would be beneficial to capture other behaviors beyond aggressive responses.

Collective action within an environment of unknown unknowns: Experiences with the port of Mars Game.

There is limited research about how groups solve collective action problems in uncertain environments, especially if groups are confronted with unknown unknowns. We aim to develop a more comprehensive view of the characteristics that allow both groups and individuals to navigate such issues more effectively. In this article, we present the results of a new online experiment where individuals make decisions of whether to contribute to the group or pursue self-interest in an environment with high uncertainty, including unknown unknowns. The behavioral game, Port of Mars is framed as a first-generation habitat on Mars where participants have to make decisions on how much to invest in the shared infrastructure to maintain system health and how much to invest in personal goals. Participants can chat during the game, and take surveys before and after the game in order to measure personality attributes and observations from the game. Initial results suggest that a higher average social value orientation and more communication are the key factors that explain why some groups are more successful than others in surviving Port of Mars. Neither other attributes of players nor the group's communication content explain the observed differences between groups.

The impact of strategies on young children's saving for the future.

The ability to save resources for future use, or saving, begins to emerge around 3 years of age, but children show low rates of saving during the preschool years. Thus, several strategies have been used to improve preschoolers' saving, such as providing a prompt, budgeting, increasing psychological distance, and simulating the future. The current study investigated (a) the development of saving in early childhood, (b) the impact of several saving strategies on children's saving (i.e., budgeting, tracking expenses, and psychological distance), and (c) whether the effectiveness of the strategies changed with age. Here, 3- to 5-year-old Canadian children (N = 254) completed the Saving Board Game, and their parents completed the saving subscale of the Children's Future Thinking Questionnaire. In the Saving Board Game, children were randomly assigned to one of the five strategies: (a) control, (b) budgeting, (c) tracking, (d) adult perspective, or (e) child perspective. An analysis of covariance with age, strategy, and response option order (as a covariate) showed a main effect of age, with 5-year-olds saving more than 3-year-olds. There was no effect of strategy or an interaction between strategy and age on children's token saving. Parent-reported child saving was positively correlated with children's Saving Board Game performance only in the control condition. We consider why these strategies failed to increase children's saving.

Age, but not education, affects social decision-making in the ultimatum game paradigm.

BACKGROUND: Social decision-making (SDM) is often studied through gaming paradigms, in which participants allocate resources among themselves and others based on predefined rules. In an adapted version of the ultimatum game (UG), SDM behavior was modulated in response to the degree of fairness of monetary offers and the social context of opponents, designed to generate either prosocial or punishing behaviors. OBJECTIVE: To investigate whether SDM evaluated by the UG is affected by age and schooling, as it is relevant to know whether sociodemographic variables may bias UG results. METHODS: A total of 131 healthy adults participated: 35 young university students and 96 participants in Universidade de São Paulo's USP 60+ program (formerly known as Universidade Aberta à Terceira Idade, a program for people aged ≥ 60 years to attend university). The sample was divided into 3 age groups (17-22, 60-69, and 70-79 years) and 3 schooling groups (4-8, 9-11, and ≥ 12 years of schooling). RESULTS: Age and schooling did not affect performance in fair monetary offers. Differences were observed in the unfair conditions. The oldest group (70-79 years) accepted less frequently the baseline unfair offers (without social context), when compared with the 17-22 and the 60-69 years groups (17-22 = 60-69 > 70-79). Regarding the prosocial unfair and punishing unfair conditions, older adults accepted such offers more frequently (17-22 < 60-69 = 70-79). Schooling effects were not observed. CONCLUSION: In the context of SDM, older adults may show prosocial behaviors more frequently than younger adults. The findings suggest performance in the UG is affected by age, but not by schooling.

ANTECEDENTES: A tomada de decisão social (TDS) é frequentemente estudada por meio de paradigmas de jogo, em que os participantes alocam recursos entre si e outros com base em regras predefinidas. Em uma versão adaptada do jogo do ultimato (JU), o comportamento de TDS foi modulado em resposta ao grau de justiça das ofertas monetárias e ao contexto social dos oponentes, projetado para produzir comportamentos pró-sociais ou punitivos. OBJETIVO: Investigar se a TDS avaliada pelo JU é afetada pela idade e escolaridade, pois é relevante saber se variáveis sociodemográficas podem influenciar os resultados do JU. MéTODOS: Participaram 131 adultos saudáveis, sendo 35 jovens universitários e 96 participantes do programa USP 60+ (antigo Universidade Aberta à Terceira Idade). A amostra foi dividida em 3 faixas etárias (17­22, 60­69 e 70­79 anos) e 3 faixas de escolaridade (4­8, 9­11 e ≥ 12 anos). RESULTADOS: Idade e escolaridade não afetaram o desempenho em ofertas monetárias justas. Diferenças foram observadas nas condições injustas. O grupo mais velho (70­79 anos) aceitou menos as ofertas injustas de referência (sem contexto social), quando comparado com o grupo de 17­22 e o de 60­69 anos (17­22 = 60­69 > 70­79). Em relação às condições pró-sociais injustas e punitivas injustas, os idosos aceitaram com maior frequência tais ofertas (17­22 < 60­69 = 70­79). Efeitos da escolaridade não foram observados. CONCLUSãO: No contexto da TDS, os idosos podem apresentar comportamentos pró-sociais com mais frequência do que os adultos mais jovens. Os resultados sugerem que o desempenho no JU é afetado pela idade, mas não pela escolaridade.

Influence of male's facial attractiveness, vocal attractiveness and social interest on female's decisions of fairness.

The present study employed dictator game and ultimatum game to investigate the effect of facial attractiveness, vocal attractiveness and social interest in expressing positive ("I like you") versus negative signals ("I don't like you") on decision making. Female participants played against male recipients in dictator game and ultimatum game while played against male proposers in ultimatum game. Results showed that participants offered recipients with attractive faces more money than recipients with unattractive faces. Participants also offered recipients with attractive voices more money than recipients with unattractive voices, especially under the positive social interest condition. Moreover, participants allocated more money to recipients who expressed positive social interest than those who expressed negative social interest, whereas they would also expect proposers who expressed positive social interest to offer them more money than proposers who expressed negative social interest. Overall, the results inform beauty premium for faces and voices on opposite-sex economic bargaining. Social interest also affects decision outcomes. However, the beauty premium and effect of social interest varies with participants' roles.

Effects of gamification in advanced life support training for clinical nurses: A cluster randomized controlled trial.

BACKGROUND: Cardiopulmonary resuscitation training is a mandatory competency, especially for healthcare professionals. However, the spread of COVID-19 caused a sharp decline in the number of participants on advanced life support training, thereby accelerating the diversification of educational methods. Gamification is an increasingly popular method of diversifying instruction, but its effectiveness remains controversial. AIM: To evaluate the effectiveness of gamification learning in advanced life support training. DESIGN: A cluster randomized controlled trial. SETTING: A single advanced life support training center. PARTICIPANTS: Clinical nurses who are currently practicing in a hospital. METHODS: A part of the existing advanced life support course was gamified using Kahoot! platform. Conventional learning and gamified learning were each conducted 11 times, and the level of knowledge after training was assessed. The assessment questions were categorized into advanced life support algorithms, teamwork, and cardiac arrest rhythms. RESULTS: A total of 267 were enrolled in the study, and 148 and 139 learners were assigned to CL and GL, respectively. There was no difference in post-training knowledge related to teamwork, and cardiac arrest rhythms between the conventional learning and gamified learning groups, but knowledge related to the advanced life support algorithm was low in the gamified learning group. CONCLUSIONS: Even if the learners are the same, advanced life support gamification training can lead to negative outcomes depending on the simplicity or goal of the training content. To improve the effectiveness of the training, various methods of gamification training should be applied depending on the goal and content of the training.

Influence of protective clothing and masks on facial trustworthiness in an investment game: insights from a Chinese population study.

Facial features are important sources of information about perceived trustworthiness. Masks and protective clothing diminish the visibility of facial cues by either partially concealing the mouth and nose or covering the entire face. During the pandemic, the use of personal protective equipment affected and redefined who trusts whom in society. This study used the classical investment game of interpersonal trust with Chinese participants to explore the impact of occlusion on interpersonal trust. Faces with moderate initial trustworthiness were occluded by a mask or protective clothing in Experiment 1 and were digitally occluded by a square in Experiment 2, and faces with three levels of initial trustworthiness were occluded by a mask in Experiment 3. Results showed that both undergraduates (Experiment 1a) and non-student adults (Experiment 1b) perceived the faces with protective clothing as more trustworthy than faces wearing standard masks and faces not wearing masks. Faces with the top halves showing were perceived as trustworthy as full faces, while faces with the bottom halves showing were perceived as less trustworthy. The effect of masks is weak and complex. Masks reduced participants' trust in faces with high initial trustworthiness, had no effect on faces with low and moderate initial trustworthiness, and only slightly increased the trust of undergraduates in faces with moderate initial trustworthiness. Our findings indicate that the lack of information caused by occlusion and the social significance associated with occlusion collectively affect people's trust behavior in Chinese society. We believe the findings of this study will be useful in elucidating the effects of personal protective equipment usage on perceptions of trustworthiness.

Using games to understand the mind.

Board, card or video games have been played by virtually every individual in the world. Games are popular because they are intuitive and fun. These distinctive qualities of games also make them ideal for studying the mind. By being intuitive, games provide a unique vantage point for understanding the inductive biases that support behaviour in more complex, ecological settings than traditional laboratory experiments. By being fun, games allow researchers to study new questions in cognition such as the meaning of 'play' and intrinsic motivation, while also supporting more extensive and diverse data collection by attracting many more participants. We describe the advantages and drawbacks of using games relative to standard laboratory-based experiments and lay out a set of recommendations on how to gain the most from using games to study cognition. We hope this Perspective will lead to a wider use of games as experimental paradigms, elevating the ecological validity, scale and robustness of research on the mind.

Enhancing ESG learning outcomes through gamification: An experimental study.

This study investigates the effectiveness of gamification in enhancing learning outcomes in Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) education. Employing a cluster randomized experiment, the research involved 22 classes from four universities, divided into gamified and traditional teaching groups. The gamified group engaged with ESG concepts through interactive, game-like elements, while the control group followed standard educational practices. The study aimed to determine whether gamification could improve ESG course effectiveness and enhance Psychological Ownership and Perceived Importance, thereby influencing learning outcomes. Data collected through post-experiment surveys were analyzed using multiple linear regression and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). Results indicated that students in the gamified group performed significantly better in ESG exams compared to the control group, demonstrating the effectiveness of gamification in enhancing academic achievement. The SEM analysis further revealed that gamification positively impacted Psychological Ownership and Perceived Importance, which in turn significantly improved academic performance. These findings suggest that incorporating gamification in ESG education can effectively engage students and deepen their understanding of complex sustainability issues. This study contributes to the field by highlighting the potential of gamification as a transformative tool in higher education, particularly in teaching abstract and multifaceted subjects like ESG.

Perception of experience influences altruism and perception of agency influences trust in human-machine interactions.

As robots become increasingly integrated into social economic interactions, it becomes crucial to understand how people perceive a robot's mind. It has been argued that minds are perceived along two dimensions: experience, i.e., the ability to feel, and agency, i.e., the ability to act and take responsibility for one's actions. However, the influence of these perceived dimensions on human-machine interactions, particularly those involving altruism and trust, remains unknown. We hypothesize that the perception of experience influences altruism, while the perception of agency influences trust. To test these hypotheses, we pair participants with bot partners in a dictator game (to measure altruism) and a trust game (to measure trust) while varying the bots' perceived experience and agency, either by manipulating the degree to which the bot resembles humans, or by manipulating the description of the bots' ability to feel and exercise self-control. The results demonstrate that the money transferred in the dictator game is influenced by the perceived experience, while the money transferred in the trust game is influenced by the perceived agency, thereby confirming our hypotheses. More broadly, our findings support the specificity of the mind hypothesis: Perceptions of different dimensions of the mind lead to different kinds of social behavior.

Prosocial emotions predict individual differences in economic decision-making during ultimatum game with dynamic reciprocal contexts.

Social decision-making is known to be influenced by predictive emotions or the perceived reciprocity of partners. However, the connection between emotion, decision-making, and contextual reciprocity remains less understood. Moreover, arguments suggest that emotional experiences within a social context can be better conceptualised as prosocial rather than basic emotions, necessitating the inclusion of two social dimensions: focus, the degree of an emotion's relevance to oneself or others, and dominance, the degree to which one feels in control of an emotion. For better representation, these dimensions should be considered alongside the interoceptive dimensions of valence and arousal. In an ultimatum game involving fair, moderate, and unfair offers, this online study measured the emotions of 476 participants using a multidimensional affective rating scale. Using unsupervised classification algorithms, we identified individual differences in decisions and emotional experiences. Certain individuals exhibited consistent levels of acceptance behaviours and emotions, while reciprocal individuals' acceptance behaviours and emotions followed external reward value structures. Furthermore, individuals with distinct emotional responses to partners exhibited unique economic responses to their emotions, with only the reciprocal group exhibiting sensitivity to dominance prediction errors. The study illustrates a context-specific model capable of subtyping populations engaged in social interaction and exhibiting heterogeneous mental states.

Proposer's moral identity modulates fairness processing in the ultimatum game: Evidence from behavior and brain potentials.

Economic decision-making is pivotal to both human private interests and the national economy. People pursue fairness in economic decision-making, but a proposer's moral identity can influence fairness processing. Previous ERP studies have revealed that moral identity has an effect on fairness considerations in the Ultimatum Game (UG), but the findings are inconsistent. To address the issue, we revised the moral-related sentences and used the ERP technique to measure the corresponding neural mechanism. We have observed that the fairness effect in UG can be mirrored in both MFN and P300 changes, whereas the moral identity effect on fairness in UG can be reflected by MFN but not P300 changes. These findings indicate that the moral identity of the proposer can modulate fairness processing in UG. The current study opens new avenues for clarifying the temporal course of the relationship between the proposer's moral identity and fairness in economic decision-making, which is beneficial for understanding the influencing mechanism of fairness processing and fair allocations in complex social contexts.

The impact of facial attractiveness and alleged personality traits on fairness decisions in the ultimatum game: Evidence from ERPs.

In the mind of the beholder the personality and facial attractiveness of others are interrelated. However, how these specific properties are processed in the neurocognitive system and interact with each other while economic decisions are made is not well understood. Here, we combined the ultimatum game with EEG technology, to investigate how alleged personality traits and the perceived facial attractiveness of proposers of fair and unfair offers influence their acceptance by the responders. As expected, acceptance rate was higher for fair than unfair allocations. Overall, responders were more likely to accept proposals from individuals with higher facial attractiveness and with more positive personality traits. In ERPs, words denoting negative personality traits elicited larger P2 components than positive trait words, and more attractive faces elicited larger LPC amplitudes. Replicating previous findings, FRN amplitudes were larger to unfair than to fair allocations. This effect was diminished if the proposer's faces were attractive or associated with positive personality traits. Hence, facial attractiveness and the valence of personality traits seem to be evaluated independently and at different time points. Subsequent decision making about unfair offers is similarly influenced by high attractiveness and positive personality of the proposer, diminishing the negative response normally elicited by "unfair" proposals, possibly due a "reward" effect. In the ERPs to the proposals the effect of positive personality and attractiveness were seen in the FRN and P300 components but for positive personality traits the effect even preceded the FRN effect. Altogether, the present results indicate that both high facial attractiveness and alleged positive personality mitigate the effects of unfair proposals, with temporally overlapping but independent neurocognitive correlates.

Repeated rock, paper, scissors play reveals limits in adaptive sequential behavior.

How do people adapt to others in adversarial settings? Prior work has shown that people often violate rational models of adversarial decision-making in repeated interactions. In particular, in mixed strategy equilibrium (MSE) games, where optimal action selection entails choosing moves randomly, people often do not play randomly, but instead try to outwit their opponents. However, little is known about the adaptive reasoning that underlies these deviations from random behavior. Here, we examine strategic decision-making across repeated rounds of rock, paper, scissors, a well-known MSE game. In experiment 1, participants were paired with bot opponents that exhibited distinct stable move patterns, allowing us to identify the bounds of the complexity of opponent behavior that people can detect and adapt to. In experiment 2, bot opponents instead exploited stable patterns in the human participants' moves, providing a symmetrical bound on the complexity of patterns people can revise in their own behavior. Across both experiments, people exhibited a robust and flexible attention to transition patterns from one move to the next, exploiting these patterns in opponents and modifying them strategically in their own moves. However, their adaptive reasoning showed strong limitations with respect to more sophisticated patterns. Together, results provide a precise and consistent account of the surprisingly limited scope of people's adaptive decision-making in this setting.

The involvement of rTPJ in intention attribution during social decision making: A TMS study.

The mini-Ultimatum Game (mini-UG) is a bargaining game used to assess the reactions of a responder to unfair offers made by a proposer under different intentionality conditions. Previous studies employing this task showed the activation of responders' right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ), which could be related to its involvement in judgments of intentionality. To verify this hypothesis, in the present study we applied online transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) over the rTPJ in responders during the mini-UG, in which we manipulated intention attribution implicitly. A cover story was employed to induce participants to believe they were interacting with another agent. We expected that interfering with the rTPJ could affect the ability of responders to assume proposers' perspective, producing higher rates of rejections of unfair offers when offers are perceived as independent from responders' intentionality to inequality. Twenty-six healthy women voluntarily participated in the study. In the mini-UG, an unfair distribution of the proposer (8/2 offer) was pitted against one of three alternative offers: fair-alternative (5/5), no-alternative (8/2), hyperfair-alternative (2/8). During the task, a train of TMS pulses was delivered at proposers' offer presentation in blocks of active (rTPJ) or control (Vertex) stimulation according to an ABAB design. As expected, findings showed that rejection of the no-alternative offers was higher under TMS stimulation of the rTPJ compared with the control TMS. This effect was modulated by the degree of trustworthiness in the cover story. These data contribute defining the mechanisms and brain areas underpinning social decision making as assessed by bargaining tasks.

We know that we don't know: Children's understanding of common ignorance in a coordination game.

Common ground is the knowledge, beliefs, and suppositions shared between partners in an interaction. Previous research has focused extensively on what partners know they know together, that is, "common knowledge." However, another important aspect of common ground is what partners know they do not know together, that is, "common ignorance." A new coordination game was designed to investigate children's use of common ignorance. Without communicating or seeing each other's decisions, 4- to 8-year-olds needed to make the same decision as their partner about whether to try to retrieve a reward. To retrieve it, at least one of them needed to know a secret code. The knowledge/ignorance of both partners was ostensively manipulated by showing one partner, both partners, or neither partner the secret code in four conditions: common knowledge (both knew the code), common ignorance (neither partner knew the code), common privileged self knowledge (only children knew the code), and common privileged other knowledge (only their partner knew the code). Children's decisions, latency, and uncertainty were coded. Results showed that the common ignorance states were generally more difficult than the common knowledge states. Unexpectedly, children at all ages had difficulty with coordinating when their partner knew the code but they themselves did not (common privileged other knowledge). This study shows that, along with common knowledge, common ignorance and common privileged self knowledge and other knowledge also play important roles in coordinating with others but may develop differently.

Highly logical and non-emotional decisions in both risky and social contexts: understanding decision making in autism spectrum disorder through computational modeling.

In risky contexts, autism spectrum disorder (ASD) individuals exhibit more logical consistency and non-emotional decisions than do typical adults (TAs). This way of deciding could be also prevailing in social contexts, leading to maladaptive decisions. This evidence is scarce and inconsistent, and further research is needed. Recent developments in computational modeling allow analysis of decisional subcomponents that could provide valuable information to understand the decision-making and help address inconsistencies. Twenty-seven individuals with ASD and 25 TAs were submitted to a framing-task and the ultimatum game (UG). The Rescorla-Wagner computational model was used to analyze UG decisions. Results showed that in the UG, the ASD group exhibited a higher utilitarianism, characterized by lower aversion to unfairness and higher acceptance of offers. Moreover, this way of deciding was predicted by the higher economic rationality found in the framing task, where people with ASD did not manifest emotional biases such as framing effect. These results could suggest an atypical decision making, highly logical and non-emotional, as a robust feature of ASD.

Exploration of the influence of the quantification method and reference scheme on feedback-related negativity and standardized measurement error of feedback-related negativity amplitudes in a trust game.

Various approaches have been taken over the years to quantify event-related potential (ERP) responses and these approaches may vary in their utility connecting empirical research and scientific claims. In this work we compared different quantification methods as well as the influence of three reference methods (linked mastoids, average reference, and current source density) on the resulting ERP amplitude. We use the experimental effects and effect sizes (Cohen's d) to evaluate the different methodological variants and we calculate intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC). In addition, the bootstrapped standard error of the means (SME, Luck et al., 2021), which was recently suggested as a quality criterion for ERP research, is used for this purpose. Our example for an ERP is the feedback-related negativity (FRN) to feedback about trustee behavior in a trust game with participants in the trustor position. We found that the quantification methods concerning the FRN influenced the absolute value of condition effects in the experimental paradigm. Yet, the patterns of effects were detected by all chosen methods, except for the 'individual difference wave'-based peak window approach. In addition, our findings stress the importance of checking the reference electrodes concerning effects of the experimental conditions. Furthermore, interactions of topographical distribution and reference choice should be considered. Finally, we were able to show that the SME is lower for more datapoints that are given in the quantification period of the FRN, and higher for more negative FRN amplitudes. These biases may lead to divergence of SME and effect size detection. Therefore, if the SME was used to compare different processing choices one should consider controlling for these important aspects of the data and possibly include other quality criteria like effect sizes.

The effect of serious game and problem-based learning on nursing students' knowledge and clinical decision-making skill regarding the application of transfusion medicine in pediatric nursing.

PURPOSE: Comparing the effect of serious game and problem-based learning on nursing students' knowledge and clinical decision-making skill regarding the application of transfusion medicine in pediatric nursing. DESIGN AND METHODS: In this quasi-experimental study, 76 undergraduate nursing students were enrolled through a convenience sampling method, and were allocated to one of the three groups of serious game, problem-based learning, and control through the block randomization method. Data were collected using a valid and reliable 3-part researcher-made tool, completed before and two weeks after the intervention. Statistical analysis was performed using paired t-test, analysis of covariance, and Bonferroni post hoc test. A significance level of <0.05 was considered. RESULTS: After the intervention, mean scores of both knowledge and clinical decision-making skill increased significantly in both intervention groups (p < 0.05). Mean post-test scores of both knowledge and clinical decision-making skill in the serious game group, and only clinical decision-making skill in the problem-based learning group were significantly higher than the control group (p < 0.05). However, no significant difference was observed regarding mean post-test scores of both knowledge and clinical decision-making skill between the intervention groups (p > 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: Both serious game and problem-based learning are proven to be effective in improving nursing students' knowledge and clinical decision-making skill regarding the application of transfusion medicine in pediatric nursing. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS: Since learning now occurs beyond classrooms and the new generation of students spend most of their time in virtual places, utilizing technology-based teaching methods like serious games can benefit both educators and students by providing continuous education, saving their time and expenses, etc.