The effect of justice perceptions and social norms on rank reversal aversion

BELAUS A; REYNA CE; FREIDIN E

Workshop; SECOND LATIN-AMERICAN WORKSHOP ON EXPERIMENTAL AND BEHAVIOURAL SOCIAL SCIENCES (LAWEBESS); 2018

Inequality aversion is an effect that has been largely inquired. Numerous experimental studies showevidence of people?s preference for reducing inequality even at a personal cost and without personalgains involved. Nonetheless, there is also evidence of people?s preference for unequal distributions in real life. When asked about large-scale distributions, people seem to favor unequal ones up to acertain level. In fact, a novel series of experimental studies (Xie et al., 2017) recently found thatuninterested third parties preferred to reduce inequality but only if it does not jeopardize the relative relation between subjects (rank order). Authors called this the rank reversal aversion effect. However, these experiments focused only on the decision of the third party after the initial distribution was randomly assigned. We aim to examine this effect in the light of the substantial literature about fairness perception and deservedness. Specifically, we wonder about the moderating role of justice perceptions on the rank reversal aversion effect. Many studies show varying fairness considerations and preferences due to different allocation mechanisms, like the acceptance of unfair offers in the Ultimatum Game when randomly generated, in contrast with its rejection if chosen by a real person. Also, formally identical situations have been found to relate to different beliefs due to changes in their frame. Judgments are not made in a vacuum: according to the elements available and the most salient information, people tend to vary their beliefs about what is appropriate and expected to do in a particular situation, thus, influencing preferences and behavioral intentions. Measured by such beliefs, social norms have been found to possess high explanatory power on preferences and decisions. In this study, we aim to investigate the role of information about real effort task performance which (do not)match the initial allocation between two subjects, in the redistributive preferences of an uninterested third party. We also want to inquire about the social norms present in those settings. We propose an experiment based on the original design of Experiment 2 by Xie et al. but with two between-subjects conditions (with information about real effort task vs. without information) and 30 within-subjects conditions (matching and not matching performance with initial distribution, and with different redistribution options). In this experiment, participants play a Disinterested Dictator Game. For each within-subjects condition participants in the role of Dictator indicate their preference on every possible redistributive option (strategy method). Also, an independent group of participants states their beliefs about what is appropriate and what others would do on each within-subjects condition. All decisions would be economically incentivized. We expect variations on people´s beliefs and preferences according to the condition. Specifically, we hypothesize that people will be prone to reverse the ranking when the initial allocation is perceived as unfair due to a mismatch with the performance on the real effort task. A better understanding of redistributive preferences would be beneficial both for the field of research on behavioral sciences and for the design of interventions and public policies.