On Feelings as a Heuristic for Making Offers in Ultimatum

Abstract

This research examined how reliance on emo- tional feelings as a heuristic influences how offers are made. Results from three experiments using the ultimatum game show that, compared with proposers who do not rely- on their feelings, proposers who rely on their feelings make less generous offers in the standard ultimatum game, more generous offers in a variant of the game allowing re- sponders to make counteroffers, and less generous offers in a dictator game in which no responses are allowed. Reli- ance on feelings triggers a more literal form of play, whereby proposers focus more on how they feel toward the content of the offers than on how they feel toward the possible outcomes of those offers, as if the offers were the final outcomes. Proposers who rely on their feelings also tend to focus on gist-based construals of the negotia- tion that capture only the essential aspects of the situation.

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