Results

Analyses proceeded as follows. The first analyses we carried out aimed at corroborating what emerged in Study 3, so we verified the existence of differences among the offers made by participants to the different responders.

Next, we investigated whether the intuitive vs. analytical modes of thinking affected the amount of money offered by participants.

3.2.3.1 Activation of mindreading processes

A one-way repeated measure ANOVA was carried out on the data collected to confirm that participants were able to differentiate their offers according to the psychological portraits of each responder.

Prior to the analysis the assumption of univariant normality was assessed on the offers made to each responder by getting skewness and kurtosis and dividing these by the standard errors. The skewness value was .-75, whereas the kurtosis value was .-87 as for the offers made to Marco; for the offers made to Grazia the skewness was -.55 and the kurtosis .53; for the offers made to Gianni the skewness value was .87, whereas the kurtosis -.11; for the offers made to Marina the skewness was -1.10 and the kurtosis -.10.

In Table 3.18 the mean values of money that the proposers offered to each responder are reported.

Responder Mean SD

Marco 49.31 14.43

Grazia 49.13 9.45

Gianni 40.34 15.86

Marina 40.51 12.63 Tab. 3.18 – Mean values of money offered to each responder

Prior to the ANOVA, the assumption of sphericity was assessed by using the Mauchly’s sphericity test. Since Mauchly’s test did not turn out to be significant (Mauchly's W(5) = 0.699, p = .059) the sphericity could be assumed.

A one-way repeated measure ANOVA showed that mean offers proposed to the four responders were significantly different (F (3,192) = 6.479, p <.001).

Responses confirmed the findings resulting from our previous study. Proposers offered larger amount of money to those responders (Marco and Grazia) who

were supposed to reject low offers and smaller sum of money to those (Gianni and Marina) who were supposed to accept even low offers

Contrast analyses allowed us to conclude that Marco and Grace, who received mean offers not significantly different, obtained higher sums of money than the other two players (see Table 3.19).

Responders Mean difference F ^(1,64) P η²

Gianni – Grazia -8.793 8.119 <.010 .225

Gianni – Marco -8.966 7.534 <.010 .212

Gianni –Marina -.172 0.008 .928 .000

Grazia – Marco -.172 0.005 .946 .000

Grazia – Marina 8.621 10.066 <.005 .264

Marco – Marina 8.793 8.038 <.010 .223

Tab. 3.19 – Contrast analyses comparing each couple of responder under the mean offered amount of money

Thus, both Study 3 and 4 showed that the characters who were described by attributing them psychological features which are supposed to induce them either to accept (Gianni and Marina) or to refuse (Grazia and Marco) unfair offers actually received, respectively, lower and higher sums of money, so proving that mindreading allowed undergraduates to figure out the possible reactions of their counterparts.

3.2.3.2 Intuitive and analytical modes of thinking

Considering the effects produced by the two modes of thinking on how participants split money, we calculated the mean values of money offered under the analytical and the intuitive thinking by collapsing the four different responders. As reported in Table 3.20, a one-sample t-test showed that intuitive and analytical processing did not lead participants to give significantly different sums of money to the responders.

Tab. 3.20 - Mean offers under the two modes of thinking and one-sample t-test

Mode of thinking Mean SD t (64) p

Intuitive 44.45 12.34

Analytical 43.59 11.94 0.418 .679

However, if we consider the offers received by each responder separately under the two modes of thinking, it turned out that the offers coherently varied according to the different types of responders (see Table 3.21). In fact, even though the differences did not reach the significance level except for Marco’s offers, results highlighted that intuitive thinking led participants to give higher offers than analytical thinking to those responders who could be defined as

“rejecters” (Marco and Grazia), whereas analytical processing induced them to make higher offers than intuitive processing to “acceptors” (Gianni and Marina).

Responder Instruction Mean SD F(1,64) P η² Intuitive 54.66 15.05

Marco

Analytical 43.57 11.67 4.868 <.05 .153 Intuitive 52.14 9.74

Grazia

Analytical 46.33 8.54 2.921 .099 .098 Intuitive 35.35 14.99

Gianni

Analytical 45.00 15.69 2.853 .103 .096 Intuitive 37.85 11.21

Marina

Analytical 43.00 13.73 1.209 .281 .043 Tab. 3.21 - One-way ANOVAs comparing mean offers given to each responder under the two modes of

thinking

Starting from these results in order to verify the existence of an interaction effect between these two factors, a repeated measure ANOVA assuming the type of responder (acceptors vs. rejecters) and the mode of thinking (intuitive vs.

analytical) as independent within-subject variables was computed. Before carrying out the analysis of variance the aggregated means of acceptors (Gianni and Marina) and rejecters (Marco and Grazia) were calculated. Mean values are reported in Table 3.22.

Type of responder Modes of thinking Mean SD

Intuitive 39.31 14.62

Acceptors

Analytical 41.55 13.95

Intuitive 53.44 12.61 Rejecters

Analytical 45.00 10.08 Tab. 3.22 - Mean offers made to acceptors and rejecters under the two modes of thinking

Since Mauchly’s sphericity test was not significant (Mauchly’s W = 0.778, p = .098) the sphericity was assumed. The repeated measure ANOVA confirmed that the main effect of the types of responder factor was significant (F(1,64) = 14.702, p <.001), whereas it showed that the main effect of modes of thinking factor was not significant (F (1,64) = 1.255, p =.272). However, interestingly, the interaction effect between the two factors reached the significance level (F(1,64) = 4.878, p <.05), as shown in Figure 3.3.

2 1

51

48

45

42

39

2 1

Fig. 3.3. Interaction effect type of responder * mode of thinking

Figure 3 clarifies the meaning of the interaction effect between the two factors.

When people are induced to think intuitively they are better at distinguishing their offers according to the psychological features of the opponents. That is, intuitive thinking leads people to behave in a more strategic way as compared to analytical thinking, which, in turn, results in a less prominent differentiation of the offers with regard of the responders’ portraits. In fact, only in the intuitive condition the difference between the offers made to the acceptors and rejecters turned out to be statistically significant, whereas under the analytical thinking offers to acceptors and rejecters, even they were consistent with the psychological profiles of the responders, did not differ significantly.

In order to exclude a possible effect due to the fact that in the processing task participants matched the description of the other player with a wrong photo (that

Acceptors Rejecters

Intuitive Analytical

F=18.865 p <.001

F=1.021 n.s

is a photo which did not correspond to the features mentioned in the verbal description), and consequently based their offers on different visual cues, we counted the right and wrong photo identifications for each character under the two conditions. Table 3.23 showed that the distributions of the right and wrong responses were similar in the intuitive and analytical conditions, so allowing us to maintain that decisions were influenced only by the way in which the psychological portrait of the responder was processed.

Responder Mode of thinking Right Wrong

Intuitive 21 11

Marco

Analytical 23 10

Intuitive 25 6

Grazia

Analytical 28 6

Intuitive 13 19

Gianni

Analytical 17 16

Intuitive 22 15

Marina

Analytical 27 11

Tab. 3.23 - Distribution of right and wrong photo identification for each responder under the two modes of thinking

These results were confirmed by two-way ANOVAs carried out for each responder by considering the right vs wrong photo identification and the intuitive vs. analytical mode of thinking as independent variables: in no case significant interaction effect emerged (see Table 3.24).

Tab. 3.24 - Mean offers given to each responder by participants who matched the right or wrong photos to the verbal description under the two modes of thinking

Results indicates that the right vs. wrong photo identification did not interact with the intuitive vs. analytical mode of thinking in determining the amount of money offered by participants to the responders.