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Appreciative Joy Meditation Enhances Acceptance of Unfair Offer in Ultimatum Game

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Abstract

Objectives

Empirical studies have shown that the Four Immeasurables Meditations (FIM) can enhance compassionate decisions towards others, such as helping victims being treated unfairly in economic games. However, research investigating how FIM affects individuals’ decisions when they themselves are victims is sparse. Thus, the current study utilized a randomized trial to scrutinize the causal influence of practicing FIM on people’s reactions towards unfairness that is directed at them.

Methods

Meditation novices (N = 135) were randomly assigned to practice either a brief Appreciative Joy Meditation (AJM) or a matched neutral visualization. They then took part in the Ultimatum Game where they first acted as a proposer to propose an offer to another person, then acted as a responder to decide whether to accept a set of offers.

Results

The AJM group accepted significantly more unfair offers, but neither proposed a higher offer to others nor changed the perception of fairness, as compared with the neutral visualization control group. Furthermore, self-reported emotional changes during meditation practice could not predict behavior in the Ultimatum Game, but the Self-Transcendence dimension of the Appreciative Joy Scale, which reflects one’s ability to feel happy for others when one is in an inferior situation, predicted higher acceptance rate of unfair offers.

Conclusions

This study provided a piece of causal evidence that a brief practice of AJM can make people more tolerable to unfairness directed against them. Broadly, this study also inspired more investigations on attitudes towards people in superior situations in future studies on FIM.

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Acknowledgments

The work described in this paper was carried out when the first author was at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Dr. Oei is now an Emeritus Professor of University of Queensland and a part-time visiting professor of James Cook University Singapore.

Funding

The work described in this paper was supported by the General Research Fund from the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong (Project No.: CUHK14605416).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Applied Psychology, Lingnan University, Tuen Mun, Hong Kong

    Gary Ting Tat Ng

  2. Department of Psychology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Ma Liu Shui, Hong Kong

    Derek Chun Kiu Lai

  3. Beijing Key Laboratory of Applied Experimental Psychology, National Demonstration Center for Experimental Psychology Education, Faculty of Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Room 1515, Houzhulou, No. 19 Xinjiekouwai St. (Beijing Normal University), Haidian District, Beijing, 100875, China

    Xianglong Zeng

  4. School of Psychology, University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

    Tian Po Oei

  5. Department of Psychology, James Cook University Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Tian Po Oei

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  1. Gary Ting Tat Ng
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  3. Xianglong Zeng
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  4. Tian Po Oei
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Contributions

GN and XZ designed the study; GN collected data; GN, DL, and XZ analyzed data; all authors discussed the findings and wrote the article.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Xianglong Zeng.

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Ethical Approval

This study was approved by IRB of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Ng, G.T.T., Lai, D.C.K., Zeng, X. et al. Appreciative Joy Meditation Enhances Acceptance of Unfair Offer in Ultimatum Game. Mindfulness 10, 1673–1683 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-019-01139-1

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