The Role of Fairness and Self-Interest in Positive and Negative Valence Ultimatum Bargaining

In this article we investigate the behavior and motives of people in a positive and negative valence Ultimatum Bargaining Game (UBG). In this last game the allocator and recipient both have the same initial endowment and bargain about how to divide a certain loss. In Experiment 1 we show by means of a word completion task, that the justice concept was more salient in the negative valence UBG than in the positive valence UBG. In Experiment 2 we studied the behavior and motives of allocators. We show that allocators in the negative valence UBG allocated more to the recipient than allocators in the positive valence UBG. Additionally, the influence of self-interest and fairness fully mediated this effect. Taken together, we show that ultimatum bargaining situation about losses is not the same as bargaining about gains. We explain our results in terms of the 'Do-no-harm'-principle (Baron, 1996)