Paying-It-Forward: How Does Social Comparison Impact on Greed Decision-making?

This study investigates the effects of social comparison on the greed decision-making. We adopted ERP technology and relevant experimental paradigms and got some interesting conclusion.Behaviorally, there is less greed behaviors in the downward comparison. However, social comparison does not affect paying-it-forward (PIF) greed, which means that individuals tend to treat an uninvolved third person in a greedy way after encountering the greedy treatment of others. There is no interaction effect between social comparison and the way of being treated. On the neural level, the interaction effect indicated that individuals were inclined to keep more cognitive resources by suppressing information processing unfavorable to them, thus to do a greed decision-making.