The effect of self-face resemblance on inequity aversion

The effect of self-face resemblance on inequity aversion remains inadequately understood. This study employed the Ultimatum Game (UG) paradigm in which participants acted as responders and decided whether to accept or reject allocation offers of varying fairness levels made by a same-gender proposer. In the self-face resemblance condition, the proposer's face was created by morphing 45 % of the participant's facial features with a stranger's face; in the control condition, it was a non-resembling stranger's face. Inequity aversion was measured by the acceptance rate of unfair offers. Participants also completed measures of narcissism to explore potential moderating effects. Results revealed that self-face resemblance reduced inequity aversion, as participants were less likely to reject unfair offers from self-resembling proposers. Moreover, narcissism moderated the effect of self-face resemblance on acceptance decisions in the UG, highly narcissistic individuals showed greater acceptance of offers from self-resembling proposers. These findings provide preliminary evidence that self-face resemblance mitigates inequity aversion and highlight the moderating role of narcissism.