When and Why People Evaluate Negative Reciprocity as More Fair Than Positive Reciprocity.

We report seven studies, conducted with people from the United States, in which participants were asked to evaluate situations involving resource distribution in contexts such as economic games, government, and the workplace. Specifically, we find that equal resource distribution in multilateral interactions is seen as more fair than engaging in reciprocity. We also find that negative reciprocity is seen as more fair than positive reciprocity in these multilateral situations because positive reciprocity is perceived as based in favoritism. We rule out alternative explanations and demonstrate that there are contexts where favoritism is not viewed as unfair. These findings are important for theories of fairness and reciprocity as they demonstrate the central role of perceived partiality in the evaluation of multi-party resource allocation. PMID: 31446663 [PubMed - in process]
Source: Cognitive Science - Category: Neuroscience Authors: Tags: Cogn Sci Source Type: research