Fairness in economic games tracks perceived entitlement rather than raw contribution.

Evidence

According to Baumard et al., cooperative behaviour is often impartial and fair. In particular, it exhibits a “common logic” of proportionality. This is most extensively discussed in relation to economic games. The authors argue that the behaviour elicited by such games is neither selfish nor altruistic, but governed by fairness. The initial suggestion is that the fair distribution of resources is proportional to the participants’ contribution, where contribution is a relatively quantifiable function of effort and talent. However, this notion of contribution is replaced with that of “entitlement” or “right.” Dictators will give money to the extent that the recipient is deemed to be entitled to it. For example, children may exhibit miserly behaviour in economic games because they see themselves as fully entitled to whatever resource they are given. Similarly, cross-cultural variability in dictator allocation is attributed to different ways of understanding the respective rights or entitlements of the agent and recipient. — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality, 467

Categorization

• XREF: This reframes fairness as entitlement-perception rather than contribution-accounting, which connects directly to the reader’s framework of partner choice (Baumard et al.) and how observable apostasy disrupts perceived entitlement. — connects to: Some cultures punish cooperators rather than freeriders in economic games — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 831; Fairness-driven giving is distinct from welfare-trade-off favoritism. — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality: The…, 16; Earned entitlements reshape perceived fairness in resource division. — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality: The…, 117 (+10 more)

Related

• Earned entitlements reshape perceived fairness in resource division. (similarity 0.90)
• Fairness judgments track each participant’s earned contribution, not just payoff equality. (similarity 0.88)
• Earned entitlements and game framing change how much people share. (similarity 0.87)
• Perceived ownership rights, not raw fairness, determine ultimatum-game rejection rates. (similarity 0.85)
• Dictator-game choices reflect competing theories of rights, not selfishness. (similarity 0.85)
• Recasting an economic game as mutual hospitality drops offers to locally appropriate sharing norms. (similarity 0.83)
• Dictators respect others’ earned property but not windfall money. (similarity 0.82)
• Fairness evolved to distribute payoffs by input, not equally. (similarity 0.82)
• Dictators invoke entitlement to justify keeping shared stakes for themselves. (similarity 0.82)
• Shared fairness intuitions cannot explain distributive variability when beliefs and situations are held constant. (similarity 0.82)
• A people’s real-life sharing customs predict their game behavior. (similarity 0.80)
• Humans pervasively prefer meritocratic benefit distributions. (similarity 0.80)
• Fairness-driven giving is distinct from welfare-trade-off favoritism. (similarity 0.80)
• Game offers track whether people see money as shared or personal. (similarity 0.80)
• People disagree persistently about what makes inequality fair (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Perceived ownership rights, not raw fairness, determine ultimatum-game rejection rates. #corroborates (0.95) — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality, 130
• Earned entitlements reshape perceived fairness in resource division. #corroborates (0.90) — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality, 117
• Earned entitlements and game framing change how much people share. #expands (0.85) — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality, 127