Introduction: Prosocial behavior, a cornerstone of human nature, has been extensively studied for over a century due to its key role in our species’s evolution. Emotions are central to fostering cooperation and regulating prosocial actions. This study investigates the emotional component of economic behavior and sex differences in decision-making under high emotional stress.
Methods: We conducted an experiment in Moscow (N=172) using four economic games with real monetary payoffs: a Trust Game (TG), Prosocial Punishment Game (PPG), Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD), Ultimatum Game (UG). One-shot decisions were made sequentially in each game. The participants interacted face-to-face with an interaction partner (“actor”) of the same sex across all four games. The actors made decisions according to an identical scheme, independent of the participants’ decisions. Specifically, in the initial TG, all the participants who trusted their partner (“actor”) lost all their funds due to their partner’s selfish decision.
Results: Most participants hesitated to impose a costly punishment for selfish behavior. However, 34.4% were willing to apply a costly punishment and confront an unfair partner directly, whereas 16.6% employed an extremely punishing strategy, spending all their available funds to completely eliminate the selfish partner’s capital. Women were more likely to employ prosocial punishment than men. In the PD, 66.3% of women defected, given earlier unfair behavior by their partner, while 53.1% of men still cooperated. Women who had used extreme prosocial punishment in the PPG were more prone to offering equal splits in the UG, a behavioral pattern not observed in men. All the effects discussed were statistically significant.
Conclusions: Our study indicates that modern Moscow youth exhibit sex-specific responses to the emotional aspects of economic interactions, in particular, when confronting selfish or unfair behavior. Women exhibited heightened sensitivity to the negative emotions elicited by unfair actions. Women also demonstrated a potential connection between emotions triggered by selfish behavior and an individual’s sense of fairness.
