Fairness judgments track each participant’s earned contribution, not just payoff equality.

Evidence

Frohlich et al. compare Fehr and Schmidt’s (1999) influential “model of inequity aversion” with an expanded version of this model that takes into account “just desert.” According to the original model, participants in economic games have two preferences: one for maximizing their own payoff, the other for minimizing unequal outcomes. It follows in particular from this model that proposers in the Ultimatum Game or dictators in the Dictator Game should never give more than half of the money, which would go against both their preference for maximizing money and their preference for minimizing equality. … Frohlich et al. claim that people have also a preference for fair distributions based on each participant’s contribution. This claim is confirmed by their results: First, the modal answer in their experiment (in this case, 30 of 73 subjects) is for participants to leave an amount of money exactly corresponding to the number of errors corrected by the recipient. Second, contrary to the prediction following from Fehr and Schmidt’s initial model, Frohlich et al. found that some of the dictators who had been less productive than their counterparts left more than 50% of the money jointly earned (8 dictators out of 35 in this situation compared to none of the 38 dictators who had been more productive than their counterparts). — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality, 145

Categorization

• XREF: Directly connects to the reader’s stated reading purpose on partner choice and ‘just desert’ — the Baumard mutualistic model being applied to Father Rodrigues in the reading context. — connects to: People accept large inequalities they judge as earned or deserved. — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality: The…, 712; Contributions carry implicit fairness judgments that trigger blame and counter-blame. — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality: The…, 191; Fairness evolved to distribute payoffs by input, not equally. — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality: The…, 310 (+4 more)

Related

• Fairness in economic games tracks perceived entitlement rather than raw contribution. (similarity 0.88)
• Fairness evolved to distribute payoffs by input, not equally. (similarity 0.87)
• Shared fairness intuitions cannot explain distributive variability when beliefs and situations are held constant. (similarity 0.85)
• Earned entitlements reshape perceived fairness in resource division. (similarity 0.84)
• People disagree persistently about what makes inequality fair (similarity 0.83)
• Humans pervasively prefer meritocratic benefit distributions. (similarity 0.83)
• A preference for fairness can directly favor equalitarianism in cooperation. (similarity 0.83)
• Equality-as-salient-point cannot explain unequal fair distributions (similarity 0.82)
• Seemingly fair outcomes can arise from self-referent loss aversion rather than fairness preferences. (similarity 0.82)
• Fairness is not reducible to mutualistic partner choice. (similarity 0.82)
• Fairness-driven giving is distinct from welfare-trade-off favoritism. (similarity 0.82)
• Fairness rests on impartiality, not mutualistic cooperation. (similarity 0.82)
• Fairness evolves from partner choice, not partner control (similarity 0.81)
• Fairness distributions reflect bargaining power, not just effort. (similarity 0.81)
• Objections to huge salaries stem from perceived contribution, not raw egalitarianism. (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• Fairness evolved to distribute payoffs by input, not equally. #corroborates (0.90) — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality, 310
• Earned entitlements reshape perceived fairness in resource division. #corroborates (0.90) — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality, 117
• Fairness in economic games tracks perceived entitlement rather than raw contribution. #qualifies (0.85) — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality, 467
• Contributions carry implicit fairness judgments that trigger blame and counter-blame. #expands (0.80) — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality, 191
• Fairness is a distinct principle guiding evaluation or decision-making #expands (0.70)
• Fairness is listed as a key principle or value #exemplifies (0.70)