Biases in choices about fairness: Psychology and economic inequality
Journal Title: Judgment and Decision Making - Year 2015, Vol 10, Issue 2
Abstract
This paper investigates choices about “distributional fairness” (sometimes called “distributive justice”), i.e., selection of the proper way for resources to be distributed in group. The study finds evidence that several of the same biases of risky decision making also apply to choices about distributional fairness, in particular focusing on the key biases that lead to prospect theory. This finding is achieved by introducing a novel thought experiment regarding the fairness of resource distributions, then manipulating the percentage of individuals who gain or lose in these distributions, and changing the sizes of gains and losses. Shared biases may mean similar heuristics are being employed. The mechanism behind this result leaves room for future exploration, as do the implications of the finding for related applications in inequality research.
Authors and Affiliations
Zachary Michaelson
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP678172
- DOI -
- Views 180
- Downloads 0
Validation of the Adult Decision-Making Competence in Slovak students
A study using a high school and college sample (age 18–26) was conducted to validate the Slovak version of the Adult Decision-Making Competence. The results were similar to findings reported by Bruine de Bruin, Parker, a...
Theories of truth as assessment criteria in judgment and decision making
Hammond (1996) argued that much of the research in the field of judgment and decision making (JDM) can be categorized as focused on either coherence or correspondence (C&C) and that, in order to understand the findings o...
Foreground-background salience effect in traffic risk communication
Pie charts are often used to communicate risk, such as the risk of driving. In the foreground-background salience effect (FBSE), foreground (probability of bad event) has greater salience than background (no bad event) i...
A hard to read font reduces the causality bias
Previous studies have demonstrated that fluency affects judgment and decision-making. The purpose of the present research was to investigate the effect of perceptual fluency in a causal learning task that usually induces...
Survey of time preference, delay discounting models
The paper surveys over twenty models of delay discounting (also known as temporal discounting, time preference, time discounting), that psychologists and economists have put forward to explain the way people actually tra...