Data for: "Decision making under stress: The “hiding behind a small cake” effect" published by RAC-Revista de Administração Contemporânea

The file contains the dataset and statistical analysis used in the article "Decision making under stress: the effect of hiding behind a small cake" by Érika Mirian Nogas, Angela Cristiane Santos Póvoa and Wesley Pech. The dataset contains the results of a lab experiment that observed how stress affects proposals in a modified version of the Ultimatum Game from 85 brazilian participants students.

This modified version added incomplete information about the size of the endowment, which allowed for the possibility of deceptive behavior in the form of the “hide behind a small cake” effect. The presence of stress was stimulated using the adapted Trier Social Stress Test for Groups (TSST-G) protocol with salivary cortisol measurement before and after stress stimulus.

Most of the literature on the effects of stress on behavior has indicated that stressed individuals usually search for a reward that benefits them, and stress becomes an excuse to behave deceitfully. When we conducted this research in Brazil, we expected to find similar results. However, we found distinct results that were very robust: proposers in the “stress” treatment made significantly larger offers in this modified version of the ultimatum than subjects in the control treatment.

We observed that proposers who made larger offers also tended to be the ones who believed that the responder would correctly guess the actual endowment. Their fear of rejection was the likely driver of this increase in offers, instead of an increase in other-regarding preferences. The results suggest that stress increased the subject’s risk awareness, since the presence of stress stimuli under asymmetric information changed the strategic capability of the participants, and the pattern of responses were modified in a way that was consistent with this hypothesis. The control group (without stress stimulus), showed more accuracy in understanding the potential use of the informational advantage given to them in the game. Thus, they utilized the “hide behind the small cake” effect more frequently.

该文件收录了由Érika Mirian Nogas、Angela Cristiane Santos Póvoa及Wesley Pech撰写的文章《压力下的决策：隐藏于小蛋糕背后的效应》所使用的数据集及统计分析。该数据集包含了一项实验室实验的结果，该实验观察了压力如何影响在修改版的最终通牒游戏中85名巴西学生的提议行为。该修改版增加了关于财富分配规模的缺失信息，从而为“隐藏于小蛋糕背后”的欺骗性行为提供了可能性。通过采用Trier社会压力测试团体版（TSST-G）方案并测量唾液皮质醇水平在压力刺激前后的变化，以激发压力的存在。大多数关于压力对行为影响的研究表明，处于压力状态下的个体通常会寻求对自己有益的奖励，并将压力作为欺骗行为的借口。然而，在我们进行的巴西研究中，我们期望发现相似的结果，但出乎意料地，我们发现了非常稳健的差异性结果：在“压力”处理组的提议者在这项修改版的最终通牒游戏中提出的金额显著高于控制处理组的受试者。我们观察到，提出更高金额提议的提议者也更倾向于相信回应者能正确猜出实际财富分配。他们对于被拒绝的恐惧可能是这种提议增加的潜在驱动因素，而非对他人关切的偏好增加。这些结果暗示，压力提高了受试者的风险意识，因为压力刺激下的非对称信息环境改变了参与者的战略能力，并且响应模式的改变与这一假设相一致。在无压力刺激的控制组（未受到压力刺激），在理解游戏中赋予他们的信息优势的潜在用途方面表现出更高的准确性。因此，他们更频繁地利用了“隐藏于小蛋糕背后”的效应。