ure 2: Game with responders’ competition
(Source: Fishbacher et al, 2009:535)
We can see that the acceptance thresholds of responders keeps decreasing further and further as the game progress. As we introduce more responders into the game, they will be more resisted to reject the offers which used to be low with the fear that other responders will take it. In the graph, the average accepted offers in RC2 and RC5 are quite similar but if we compare to the situation in BG, there would be a huge difference. To summarize, both the introduction of the competition and the increase in responder reduced the accepted amount considerably.
In a nutshell, from the ultimatum game, fairness concerns play a big role in our process of decision making. In the standard ultimatum game, some are willing to give up some kind of profit when they feel that they are being treated unfairly. However, it is ambiguous to define that feeling of “unfairness”. In some circumstances, to be fair or unfair is related to the relative payoffs, when the responders did not hesitate to turn down the low offers in the standard ultimatum games. In other cases, the social norms “fairness”, like other non-monetary concerns, is completely dominated by the competition effects. Like in the games with proposers and responders’ competition, when participants know that the inequality outcomes are unavoidable, they try their best to turn that equality into advantage and to increase their monetary payoffs as much as possible. At the end of the day, competition force people to be selfish.
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