Norms of Fairness.

Abstract

Chapter 1 introduces the topic of fairness. Chapter 2 measures the beliefs and behavior of third parties who were given the opportunity to sanction or reward individuals who engaged in an economic bargaining game under different social contexts. Third parties preferred to compensate the victim of an unfair bargaining outcome rather than sanction the perpetrator, but were willing to punish the perpetrator when this was the only option available. Third party beliefs about whether unequal bargaining outcomes were fair differed based on the bargaining context, but actual sanctioning and compensation behavior did not.

Chapter 3 uses an economic bargaining game to demonstrate that both fair behavior and perceptions of fairness depend upon beliefs about what one ought to do in a situation – that is, upon normative expectations. We manipulated such expectations by creating informational asymmetries about the offer choices available to the Proposer, and found that behavior varies accordingly. Proposers and Responders showed a remarkable degree of agreement in their beliefs about which choices are considered fair. We discuss how these results fit into a theory of social norms.

Chapter 4 uses an economic bargaining game to test for the existence of two phenomena related to social norms, namely norm manipulation – the selection of an interpretation of the norm that best suits an individual – and norm evasion – the deliberate, private violation of a social norm. We found that the manipulation of a norm of fairness was characterized by a self-serving bias in beliefs about what constituted normatively acceptable behavior, so that an individual who made an uneven bargaining offer genuinely believed it was fair, even though recipients of the offer considered it to be unfair. In contrast, norm evasion operated as a highly explicit process. When they could do so without the recipient’s knowledge, individuals made uneven offers despite knowing that their behavior was unfair. Chapter 5 concludes.