Personal information, communication and social cognition : evidence in ultimatum game

Decision making process is often complex and requires good judgement ability in processing different types of information gathered from personal experiences, observations, verbal and nonverbal interaction with others and so forth. Hence, social cognition plays an important role when individuals make decisions. Thus, this paper seeks to understand what kind of information affects the choices we make the most through an Ultimatum Game (hereafter known as UG) setting, where proposer was given increasing amount of information of responder and then asked to determine responder’s corresponding minimum acceptance amount, and especially how “cheap talk” has an impact on the accuracy1 of proposer. Second, we hope to find out if any specific traits that help to decode the social cognition skill involved. Overall, there were 3 findings. First, we found that proposer’s accuracy on respondents’ minimum acceptance amount remained unchanged from stages 1 to 3 but decreases when respondents are able to engage in free talk in stage 4. Age and social anxiety were found to be predictors of social cognitive ability. Lastly, no discrimination was found in the proposer’s offer across gender and nationality.Bachelor of Art