According to a study published in the journal PLOS One, individuals experiencing depressive symptoms who view themselves as having a high social standing are more likely to perceive unfair financial offers as fair. Researchers led by Yin Hanmo of Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia found that this perceived high social status shifts how individuals cognitively process and rationalize inequitable splits during economic interactions.
How Depression Alters Fairness Perceptions in the Ultimatum Game
Depression frequently brings about cognitive distortions that negatively alter how a person evaluates risk, assesses personal value, and judges the intentions of others. To study these decision-making processes, researchers often employ a behavioral economics task known as the Ultimatum Game. In this task, one participant proposes how to divide a sum of money, and a second participant decides whether to accept or reject the offer. Accepting finalizes the split, while rejecting means both players receive nothing.
From a purely logical standpoint, responders should accept any non-zero amount. However, human behavior routinely defies strict economic logic. People typically reject highly uneven splits—such as a 90-10 division—to punish proposers for violating social norms. According to studies, facing such unfair offers triggers negative emotions and activates brain regions associated with conflict and disgust. Yin Hanmo and colleagues sought to resolve conflicting past results regarding whether depressed individuals reject more or fewer offers by examining subjective socioeconomic status as a moderating factor.
Testing Social Standing and Behavioral Economics Among Students
To test this hypothesis, Yin Hanmo and the research team recruited 274 university students in China and Malaysia. Participants completed a standardized questionnaire measuring depressive symptoms over the preceding week, such as sadness, restless sleep, and low energy. They also completed a subjective socioeconomic status assessment, selecting their perceived rung on a 10-rung ladder depicting societal rank based on money, education, and jobs.
Following these assessments, the students played a paper-based version of the Ultimatum Game. They evaluated 18 proposed monetary splits from anonymous partners, choosing to accept or reject each deal while rating its fairness on a scale from one to seven. The results showed that depressive symptoms alone did not dictate rejection rates. Instead, the effects depended entirely on the participant’s self-reported social standing on the ladder.
Rationalizing Inequity: The Role of Social Status Expectations
Among participants who ranked themselves high on the social ladder, higher levels of depression correlated with viewing unequal offers as more fair. Because these individuals perceived bad deals as equitable, they were less likely to reject them. Conversely, this pattern did not appear among participants who placed themselves lower on the social ladder, where depression levels did not alter fairness perceptions or rejection rates.
Did you know? Subjective socioeconomic status measures how an individual views their rank in society, which often differs from objective financial metrics like household income or career status.
Researchers suggest that differing baseline expectations drive this divergence. Individuals with high social standing generally expect equitable treatment. When faced with an unfair financial offer, the gap between expectation and reality creates psychological friction. The study’s authors propose that individuals with both high social standing and depressive symptoms cope with this friction by mentally reframing the unequal split as acceptable, thereby avoiding the emotional distress of acknowledging unfair treatment.
Limitations and Future Research Directions
The current study focused on university students experiencing varying levels of depressive symptoms rather than clinical patients diagnosed with major depressive disorder. Clinical populations occasionally exhibit higher rejection rates in the Ultimatum Game, suggesting that regulatory mental strategies may break down as depressive symptoms become severe. Furthermore, because university students share similar educational environments and lack established careers, their subjective social status functions differently than it would in older working-age adults.
Future research must test whether objective income levels produce similar effects on financial decision-making. Investigators also aim to measure participants’ baseline expectations of fairness directly to confirm whether expectation violations drive these behavioral shifts.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Ultimatum Game in behavioral research?
The Ultimatum Game is an economic task where one player proposes a monetary split and a second player either accepts it, allowing both to keep the money, or rejects it, causing both to forfeit the funds.
How does subjective socioeconomic status affect depression and decision-making?
According to the research published in PLOS One, higher levels of depression among individuals with high perceived social standing lead them to view unequal financial offers as fairer and reject them less often.
Did the study look at clinically diagnosed depression?
No, the study examined university students experiencing varying levels of depressive symptoms rather than patients diagnosed with major depressive disorder.
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