Depression’s impact on fairness perceptions depends on socioeconomic status

A study of Chinese students in China and Malaysia found that socioeconomic status moderates the effects of depression on fairness perceptions. Students with high (but subclinical) levels of depressive symptoms tended to view unfair offers as fairer. However, this was only the case with students whose socioeconomic status was high. The paper was published in PLOS One.

Depression is a common mental health disorder characterized by persistent low mood, loss of interest or pleasure, and reduced motivation and energy. Additionally, people with depression tend to experience negative cognitive biases, including a tendency to interpret information in pessimistic or self-critical ways. They tend to remain focused on negative thoughts about themselves and past experiences. This is called rumination and it contributes to maintaining the low mood and furthers cognitive biases.

Depressed individuals tend to show heightened sensitivity to rejection and are more prone to interpreting ambiguous social cues as negative or hostile. They tend to overestimate others’ disapproval, indifference, or criticism, even in neutral interactions.

Depression can also impair emotion recognition, leading to difficulties in accurately identifying others’ facial expressions, tone of voice, or intentions. These distortions in social perception can contribute to social withdrawal and reduced engagement with others. Depressed individuals are less able to perceive positive emotions in others, while they perceive negative emotions much more easily. Altogether, the effects of depression on social perception can create a self-reinforcing cycle in which biased interpretations maintain social isolation and depressive symptoms.

Study author Yin Hanmo and their colleagues note that individuals with depression often exhibit cognitive distortions in socioeconomic decision-making, particularly in interpreting fairness. They wanted to explore how depression influences fairness perception and rejection behaviors in the Ultimatum Game. They also wanted to see whether subjective socioeconomic status moderates the relationship between depression and behaviors related to this game.

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Study participants were 274 Chinese students from the National University of Malaysia (in Malaysia) and the Zhengzhou University of Economics and Business (in China). All participants were native speakers of Chinese. Of the participants, 173 were male. Their average age was 21 years.

Study participants completed the Ultimatum Game in groups of 10-30 individuals. In a typical Ultimatum Game, one player makes an offer to the other player about how to split a certain amount of money or points between the two players. The other player can accept or reject. Typically, if the second player accepts, players get the offered amounts. If the second player rejects, players get nothing. In social psychology research, the study participant is typically the only player, while the behavior of the other player is, unbeknownst to the participant, controlled by the researchers.

In the scope of the Ultimatum Game in this study, participants were presented with a table with 9 offers presented as coming from randomly matched anonymous proposers. The offers differed in how much of the total goes to the participant and how much to the other party. Each offer was offered twice, so each participant viewed a total of 18 offers. The order of offers was randomized. Participants could accept or reject each offer, and the amount they were paid in the end depended on the sum of all accepted offers. The average sum paid to participants was somewhat below $1.

After completing the Ultimatum Game, participants completed assessments of fairness of all 9 offers presented in the game. They also completed an assessment of depression symptoms (the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale) and an assessment of subjective socioeconomic status (the 10-rung MacArthur scale).

Results showed that participants with higher levels of depression tended to rate unfair offers as fairer. However, the likelihood that unfair offers would be rejected was not directly associated with depression. Individuals who perceived their socioeconomic status as higher also tended to perceive unfair offers as fairer. Individuals who perceived unfair offers as fairer were less likely to reject them.

Further analyses revealed that this tendency of individuals with more pronounced depressive symptoms to perceive unfair offers as fairer was present only among participants with high subjective socioeconomic status.

“These findings suggest that subjective socioeconomic status shapes the cognitive consequences of depression, highlighting the importance of accounting for socio-cognitive contextual factors in understanding how depression affects social decision-making processes,” study authors concluded.

The study contributes to the scientific understanding of social perception specificities of depressed individuals. However, it should be noted that the design of the study does not allow definitive conclusions about the interaction of depression and socioeconomic status in their effects on fairness perceptions to be derived from the results.

The paper, “Subjective socioeconomic status moderates depression’s impact on fairness perception in the ultimatum game: A moderated mediation model,” was authored by Yin Hanmo, Rozainee Khairudin, Shi Yixin, Zhang Xi, Chen Xinyu, Syakirien Yusoff, and Nasrudin Subhi.