{
  "id": 6423116,
  "title": "New study reveals how depression twists our perception of fairness",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/09/new-study-reveals-how-depression-twists-our-perception-of-fairness",
  "topic": "health",
  "section": "Health & Medicine",
  "published": "2026-09-09T13:00:03.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "PsyPost",
    "slug": "psypost",
    "url": "https://www.psypost.org/how-social-status-and-depression-warp-our-sense-of-fairness/"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "A recent study reveals how depression can alter a person's perception of fairness. Published in the journal PLOS One, the research indicates that individuals experiencing depressive symptoms may be more likely to view unfair financial offers as fair, provided they consider themselves to hold a high social status. Depression is characterized by cognitive distortions that negatively influence how a person perceives themselves and their surroundings, impacting risk assessment, self-evaluation, and judgments of others' intentions in social interactions. Researchers employ the Ultimatum Game, a behavioral economics task, to study fairness processing. In this game, one player proposes how to divide money with another, who then decides to accept or reject the offer. While logically, accepting any offer greater than zero is rational, humans often reject unequal splits, demonstrating altruistic punishment—an emotional response to perceived inequity. The study, conducted by psychology researcher Yin Hanmo and her team at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, involved 274 university students from China and Malaysia. The participants completed questionnaires to assess depressive symptoms and subjective socioeconomic status, gauged by selecting a rung on a 10-rung ladder representing their perceived social position. They then played a modified Ultimatum Game, evaluating 18 proposed monetary splits, ranging from equal to highly skewed favors. The study found that depressive symptoms alone do not directly influence the likelihood of rejecting an uneven offer. Instead, this effect depends on the participant's self-perceived social standing. Those who ranked themselves high on the social ladder and had higher levels of depression were more likely to perceive unequal offers as fair, thus rejecting them less frequently. However, participants who perceived themselves as lower on the social ladder were unaffected by their depressive symptoms when evaluating unequal offers. The researchers attribute this discrepancy to differing baseline expectations. Individuals with high social status expect fairness and may rationalize unfair offers to cope with psychological friction, leading to skewed financial decisions. In contrast, those with lower social status may not view strict equity as necessary, thus not experiencing the same emotional conflict when faced with unfair offers.",
  "summary": "People experiencing depression often view social exchanges through a distorted lens. A new study reveals that depressive symptoms can make unfair financial deals seem more acceptable, but only for those who feel they have high social standing.",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}