The Benefit of Gratitude: Trait Gratitude Is Associated With Effective Economic Decision-Making in the Ultimatum Game.

The current research investigated the role of gratitude in economic decisions about offers that vary in fairness yet benefit both parties if accepted. Participants completed a trait/dispositional gratitude measure and then were randomly assigned to recall either an event that made them feel grateful (i.e., induced gratitude condition) or the events of a typical day (i.e., neutral condition). After the gratitude induction task, participants played the ultimatum game (UG), deciding whether to accept or reject fair offers (i.e., proposer: responder ratio $5:5) and unfair offers (i.e., proposer: responder ratios of $9:1, $8:2, or $7:3) from different proposers. Results showed that trait gratitude was positively correlated with respondents' acceptance of unfair offers. However, experimentally induced momentary gratitude did not influence acceptance of unfair offers. The trait or disposition to be grateful involves the enduring capacity across different types of situations and benefactors to see the good that is present, even when that benefit is small. Accordingly, dispositional gratitude - but not momentarily induced gratitude - was associated with a greater propensity to accept even the small benefits within unfair offers which otherwise pose barriers to making the effective economic decision of accepting offers regardless of their relative size.

Enhanced Memory for Fair-Related Faces and the Role of Trait Anxiety.

The current research examined whether fair consideration-a social norm that people inherently prefer to confirm-would modulate face recognition. Each neutral face was associated with fair or unfair offers via an economic decision task, the Ultimatum Game (UG) task. After the UG, participants were asked to identify the faces of proposers who made different offers. Enhanced memory was observed for fair-related compared to unfair-related faces. Furthermore, high trait anxiety was associated with reduced memory for fair-related faces. These results were further confirmed by signal detection theory. The current research provided initial evidence that people showed enhanced memory for faces that made fair offers from the economic decision task, and that high trait anxiety was associated with reduced fair-related memory. Possible neural mechanisms and the implication in economic and social situations have been discussed.

The cross-race effect in face recognition memory by bicultural individuals.

Social-cognitive models of the cross-race effect (CRE) generally specify that cross-race faces are automatically categorized as an out-group, and that different encoding processes are then applied to same-race and cross-race faces, resulting in better recognition memory for same-race faces. We examined whether cultural priming moderates the cognitive categorization of cross-race faces. In Experiment 1, monoracial Latino-Americans, considered to have a bicultural self, were primed to focus on either a Latino or American cultural self and then viewed Latino and White faces. Latino-Americans primed as Latino exhibited higher recognition accuracy (A') for Latino than White faces; those primed as American exhibited higher recognition accuracy for White than Latino faces. In Experiment 2, as predicted, prime condition did not moderate the CRE in European-Americans. These results suggest that for monoracial biculturals, priming either of their cultural identities influences the encoding processes applied to same- and cross-race faces, thereby moderating the CRE.

Imagination perspective affects ratings of the likelihood of occurrence of autobiographical memories.

Two experiments tested and confirmed the hypothesis that when the phenomenological characteristics of imagined events are more similar to those of related autobiographical memories, the imagined event is more likely to be considered to have occurred. At Time 1 and 2-weeks later, individuals rated the likelihood of occurrence for 20 life events. In Experiment 1, 1-week after Time 1, individuals imagined 3 childhood events from a first-person or third-person perspective. There was a no-imagination control. An increase in likelihood ratings from Time 1 to Time 2 resulted when imagination was from the third-person but not first-person perspective. In Experiment 2, childhood and recent events were imagined from a third- or first-person perspective. A significant interaction resulted. For childhood events, likelihood change scores were greater for third-person than first-person perspective; for recent adult events, likelihood change scores were greater for first-person than third-person perspective, although this latter trend was not significant.