Alex Shaw | University of Chicago (original) (raw)
Papers by Alex Shaw
Cognitive science, Jan 5, 2017
Across a variety of situations, people strongly condemn plagiarizers who steal credit for ideas, ... more Across a variety of situations, people strongly condemn plagiarizers who steal credit for ideas, even when the theft in question does not appear to harm anyone. Why would people react negatively to relatively harmless acts of plagiarism? In six experiments, we predict and find that these negative reactions are driven by people's aversion toward agents who attempt to falsely improve their reputations. In Studies 1-3, participants condemn plagiarism cases that they agree are harmless (i.e., stealing credit from an anonymous source). This effect is mediated by the extent to which participants perceive the plagiarizer to have falsely benefitted from plagiarizing. In Studies 4-5, we demonstrate that this effect is not explained solely by participants' negative response to lies or violations of permission. In Study 6, participants condemn a plagiarism case in which the idea's original author actually benefits, providing the strongest evidence that people condemn plagiarism for...
Data on children's friendship predictions based on similarity, propinquity, and loyalty.
Wiley interdisciplinary reviews. Cognitive science, 2021
Whether a student wants to improve their ability (i.e., has learning goals) or demonstrate it (i.... more Whether a student wants to improve their ability (i.e., has learning goals) or demonstrate it (i.e., has performance goals) plays an important role in their learning and motivation; students focused on the latter tend to avoid taking on challenges and seeking help when they need it. In the achievement literature, these different goals are thought to result primarily from holding different mindsets about whether one's ability is malleable or fixed. We argue, however, that this traditional framework has largely overlooked the powerful role that reputational concerns play in influencing which achievement goals students pursue. Specifically, reputational concerns may drive students to pursue performance goals and "prove" their ability to others, irrespective of their mindsets. We argue that closely investigating these concerns may help uncover new mechanisms by which performance goals are fostered and maintained as well as new strategies for developing interventions aimed ...
Trading is a cornerstone of economic exchange and can take many different forms. In simple trades... more Trading is a cornerstone of economic exchange and can take many different forms. In simple trades, one item is often exchanged for another; but in more complex trades, agents can trade different numbers of items, reflecting the differing value of the items being traded. Though young children regularly engage in simple trades, we examine whether they understand a key element involved in more complex trades—the idea that people may subjectively value the same item differently and accept trades that numerically disadvantage themselves in the service of acquiring more of a preferred item. To do so, we ran three studies with 5to 10-year-old children (N = 314) in which they were asked to predict whether a third party would accept or reject different types of trades. Results revealed that children across this age range predict that a third party will accept a numerically disadvantageous trade when they prefer one resource over another, but not when they have an equal preference for both re...
Judgment and Decision Making, 2017
People often object to inequity; they react negatively to receiving less than others (disadvantag... more People often object to inequity; they react negatively to receiving less than others (disadvantageous inequity aversion), and more than others (advantageous inequity aversion). Here we study people’s folk intuitions about inequity aversion: what do people infer about others’ fairness concerns, when they observe their reactions to disadvantageous or advantageous inequity? We hypothesized that, people would not intuitively regard disadvantageous inequity aversion by itself as being rooted in fairness, but they would regard advantageous inequity aversion by itself as being rooted in fairness. In four studies, we used vignettes describing inequity aversion of a made up alien species to assess people’s folk intuitions about inequity aversion. The studies supported our main hypothesis that disadvantageous inequity aversion, without advantageous inequity aversion, does not fit people’s folk conception of fairness. Instead, participants reported it to be rooted in envy. According to...
Developmental Psychology
Secrets carry valuable social information. Because the content of secrets can be damaging to the ... more Secrets carry valuable social information. Because the content of secrets can be damaging to the secret-keeper’s reputation, people should only disclose their secrets to people whom they trust. Therefore, tracking which people know each other’s secrets can be used as cue of social relationships: If one person tells another person a secret, those people are likely friends. Here, in 5 studies with 3- to 12-year-old children (total N = 452), we examined the developmental trajectory of reasoning about secret sharing as an indication of third-party friendship. By age 6, but not before, children expected that a person would be friends with someone that she told a secret. We replicated this main finding across four studies by comparing secret sharing to other cues of affiliation. Children treated sharing a secret as a stronger cue to friendship than sharing a physical object (Study 1), sharing a fact (Studies 2–4), or sharing membership on the same sports team (Study 3). Although younger children did not understand that secret sharing indicated friendship, they did expect people to be more likely to disclose their secrets to friends than to nonfriends (Study 5). Taken together, our results indicate that children understand the social significance of sharing secrets and use secret sharing to make important predictions about the social world. Specifically, children infer social relationships based on which people know each other’s secrets and expect others to share secrets selectivity with friends.
Behavioral and Brain Sciences
Satisfying one's obligations is an important part of being human. However, people's oblig... more Satisfying one's obligations is an important part of being human. However, people's obligations can often prescribe contradictory behaviors. Moral obligations conflict (loyalty vs. fairness), and so do obligations to different groups (country vs. family when one is called to war). We propose that a broader framework is needed to account for how people balance different social and moral obligations.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
People try to avoid appearing dishonest. Although efforts to avoid appearing dishonest can often ... more People try to avoid appearing dishonest. Although efforts to avoid appearing dishonest can often reduce lying, we argue that, at times, the desire to appear honest can actually lead people to lie. We hypothesize that people may lie to appear honest in cases where the truth is highly favorable to them, such that telling the truth might make them appear dishonest to others. A series of studies provided robust evidence for our hypothesis. Lawyers, university students, and MTurk and Prolific participants said that they would have underreported extremely favorable outcomes in real-world scenarios (Studies 1a-1d). They did so to avoid appearing dishonest. Furthermore, in a novel behavioral paradigm involving a chance game with monetary prizes, participants who received in private a very large number of wins reported fewer wins than they received; they lied and incurred a monetary cost to avoid looking like liars (Studies 2a-2c). Finally, we show that people's concern that others would think that they have overreported is valid (Studies 3a-3b). We discuss our findings in relation to the literatures on dishonesty and on reputation.
Child Development
Condemnation is ubiquitous in the social world and adults treat condemnation as a costly signal. ... more Condemnation is ubiquitous in the social world and adults treat condemnation as a costly signal. We explore when children begin to treat condemnation as a signal by presenting 4- to 9-year-old children (N = 435) with stories involving a condemner of stealing and a noncondemner. Children were asked to predict who would be more likely to steal as well as who should be punished more harshly for stealing. In five studies, we found that 7- to 9-year-old children treat condemnation as a signal-thinking that a condemner is less likely to steal and should be punished more harshly if caught hypocritically stealing later. We discuss the implications of these results for children's emerging understanding of signaling and moral condemnation.
Cognitive Science
If you are kind to me, I am likely to reciprocate and doing so feels fair. Many theories of socia... more If you are kind to me, I am likely to reciprocate and doing so feels fair. Many theories of social exchange assume that such reciprocity and fairness are well aligned with one another. We argue that this correspondence between reciprocity and fairness is restricted to interpersonal dyads and does not govern more complex multilateral interactions. When multiple people are involved, reciprocity leads to partiality, which may be seen as unfair by outsiders. 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.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
Abstract In contexts where fairness is important, people attempt to avoid the appearance of parti... more Abstract In contexts where fairness is important, people attempt to avoid the appearance of partiality. Although such efforts to avoid appearing partial can often reduce biases, we argue that, at times, such efforts can actually lead people to be biased against their friends. We theorize that people do so because they recognize that benefitting their friends may be viewed by others as partial. This argument makes two key predictions, which we investigated in eight studies using workplace scenarios. First, we predicted and found that, when the decision was public, allocators were reluctant to give a bonus to a deserving employee when that employee was a friend rather than a non-friend. In private, however, participants were willing to give the bonus to the deserving person whether she was a friend or a non-friend, suggesting that their public behavior was aimed at avoiding the appearance of bias. Second, we predicted and found that allocators' reluctance to give a bonus to a deserving friend is mediated by their beliefs that others would find this behavior to be unfair. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of this bias resulting from a desire to avoid appearing partial.
SSRN Electronic Journal
Making appropriate evaluations of rule-breakers requires not only knowledge of the rule in questi... more Making appropriate evaluations of rule-breakers requires not only knowledge of the rule in question, but also an understanding of the intent behind the given rule. In many cases, it can be acceptable to break a rule (the strict “letter of a rule”) if this does not violate the reason the rule was created (the “spirit of the rule”). Making these distinctions is critical for a developed normative understanding of rules, yet there has been little work that has examined when children develop this ability. While there has been a wealth of research on children’s understanding of rules and the intentions of rule-beakers, no one has examined their understanding of the intentions behind rules—the spirit of the rule. Here, we investigate if and when children begin to believe that it is less wrong to violate the letter of a rule if one does not violate the rule’s spirit. Participants (N = 240, 4- to 10-year-olds) were asked to evaluate a rule-breaker either who violated the letter of a rule, but not the spirit or who violated the letter and spirit of a rule. We find that, all children recognized the rule had technically been broken in both cases, but they were much less likely to make negative evaluations of someone for violating a rule if they only broke the letter of the rule, without violating the spirit of the rule. We also find that children increasingly differentiate between violations of the letter of a rule and violations of the spirit of a rule as they mature. We discuss how these studies provide insight into children’s early normative understanding.
Trends in cognitive sciences, 2018
Until recently, many psychologists were skeptical that young children cared about reputation. New... more Until recently, many psychologists were skeptical that young children cared about reputation. New evidence suggests that by age five, children begin to understand the broad importance of reputation and to engage in surprisingly sophisticated impression management. These findings prompt exciting new questions about the development of a fundamental social competency.
Cognitive Science, 2017
Successful and repeated cooperation requires fairly sharing the spoils of joint endeavors. Fair d... more Successful and repeated cooperation requires fairly sharing the spoils of joint endeavors. Fair distribution is often done according to preferences for equitable outcomes even though strictly equitable outcomes can lead to inefficient waste. In addition to preferences about the outcome itself, decision makers are also sensitive to the attributions others might make about them as a result of their choice. We develop a novel mathematical model where decision makers turn their capacity to infer latent desires and beliefs from the behavior of others (theoryof-mind) towards themselves, anticipating the judgments others will make about them. Using this model we can construct a preference to be seen as impartial and integrate it with preferences for equitable and efficient outcomes. We test this model in two studies where the anticipated attribution of impartiality is ambiguous: when one agent is more deserving than the other and when unbiased procedures for distribution are made available...
Journal of experimental psychology. Applied, Jan 19, 2018
Workers tend to be dissatisfied when their peers receive more than them for doing the same work. ... more Workers tend to be dissatisfied when their peers receive more than them for doing the same work. The fear of creating such dissatisfaction may cause leaders in organizations to waste resources that cannot be allocated equally between their workers. Here we explore the effectiveness of a procedure designed to reduce such waste by empowering workers with the agency to decide whether or not to pay other workers more. We predict that workers' sense of agency reduces their dissatisfaction with others' better outcomes. Seven studies supported this prediction by demonstrating that agentic participants, who were involved in creating allocations, tended to be more satisfied with others' better outcomes than nonagentic participants, who were not involved in creating allocations. Longitudinal lab studies, measuring real behavior, showed that agentic participants remained more satisfied than nonagentic ones even five weeks after their initial decision. The findings provided evidence...
Condemnation is ubiquitous in the social world and adults treat condemnation as a costly signal. ... more Condemnation is ubiquitous in the social world and adults treat condemnation as a costly signal. We explore when children begin to treat condemnation as a signal by presenting 4-to 9-year-old children (N = 435) with stories involving a condemner of stealing and a noncondemner. Children were asked to predict who would be more likely to steal as well as who should be punished more harshly for stealing. In five studies, we found that 7-to 9-year-old children treat condemnation as a signal-thinking that a condemner is less likely to steal and should be punished more harshly if caught hypocritically stealing later. We discuss the implications of these results for children's emerging understanding of signaling and moral condemnation.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2015
Two central principles that guide resource-allocation decisions are equity (providing equal pay f... more Two central principles that guide resource-allocation decisions are equity (providing equal pay for equal work) and efficiency (not wasting resources). When these two principles conflict with one another, people will often waste resources to avoid inequity. We suggest that people wish to avoid inequity not because they find it inherently unfair, but because they want to avoid the appearance of partiality associated with it. We explore one way to reduce waste by reducing the perceived partiality of inequitable allocations. Specifically, we hypothesize that people will be more likely to favor an efficient (albeit inequitable) allocation if it puts them in a disadvantaged position than if it puts others in a disadvantaged position. To test this hypothesis, we asked participants to choose between giving some extra resource to one person (thereby creating inequity between this person and equally deserving others) and not giving the resource to anyone (thereby wasting the resource). Six studies, using realistic scenarios and behavioral paradigms, provide robust evidence for a self-disadvantaging effect: Allocators were consistently more likely to create inequity to avoid wasting resources when the resulting inequity would put them at a relative disadvantage than when it would put others at a relative disadvantage. We further find that this self-disadvantaging effect is a direct result of people's concern about appearing partial. Our findings suggest the importance of impartiality even in distributive justice, thereby bridging a gap between the distributive and procedural justice literatures. (PsycINFO Database Record
People often object to inequity; they react negatively to receiving less than others (disadvantag... more People often object to inequity; they react negatively to receiving less than others (disadvantageous inequity aversion), and more than others (advantageous inequity aversion). Here we study people's folk intuitions about inequity aversion: what do people infer about others' fairness concerns, when they observe their reactions to disadvantageous or advantageous inequity? We hypothesized that, people would not intuitively regard disadvantageous inequity aversion by itself as being rooted in fairness, but they would regard advantageous inequity aversion by itself as being rooted in fairness. In four studies, we used vignettes describing inequity aversion of a made up alien species to assess people's folk intuitions about inequity aversion. The studies supported our main hypothesis that disadvantageous inequity aversion, without advantageous inequity aversion, does not fit people's folk conception of fairness. Instead, participants reported it to be rooted in envy. According to these results, the claim that disadvantageous inequity aversion reveals a concern with fairness, does not readily accord with people's intuitions. We connect these findings to other pieces of evidence in the literatures of behavioral economics, developmental psychology, and social psychology, indicating that lay people's intuitions may be on the mark in this case. Specifically, unlike advantageous inequity aversion, disadvantageous inequity aversion need not be rooted in a sense of fairness.
Cognitive science, Jan 5, 2017
Across a variety of situations, people strongly condemn plagiarizers who steal credit for ideas, ... more Across a variety of situations, people strongly condemn plagiarizers who steal credit for ideas, even when the theft in question does not appear to harm anyone. Why would people react negatively to relatively harmless acts of plagiarism? In six experiments, we predict and find that these negative reactions are driven by people's aversion toward agents who attempt to falsely improve their reputations. In Studies 1-3, participants condemn plagiarism cases that they agree are harmless (i.e., stealing credit from an anonymous source). This effect is mediated by the extent to which participants perceive the plagiarizer to have falsely benefitted from plagiarizing. In Studies 4-5, we demonstrate that this effect is not explained solely by participants' negative response to lies or violations of permission. In Study 6, participants condemn a plagiarism case in which the idea's original author actually benefits, providing the strongest evidence that people condemn plagiarism for...
Data on children's friendship predictions based on similarity, propinquity, and loyalty.
Wiley interdisciplinary reviews. Cognitive science, 2021
Whether a student wants to improve their ability (i.e., has learning goals) or demonstrate it (i.... more Whether a student wants to improve their ability (i.e., has learning goals) or demonstrate it (i.e., has performance goals) plays an important role in their learning and motivation; students focused on the latter tend to avoid taking on challenges and seeking help when they need it. In the achievement literature, these different goals are thought to result primarily from holding different mindsets about whether one's ability is malleable or fixed. We argue, however, that this traditional framework has largely overlooked the powerful role that reputational concerns play in influencing which achievement goals students pursue. Specifically, reputational concerns may drive students to pursue performance goals and "prove" their ability to others, irrespective of their mindsets. We argue that closely investigating these concerns may help uncover new mechanisms by which performance goals are fostered and maintained as well as new strategies for developing interventions aimed ...
Trading is a cornerstone of economic exchange and can take many different forms. In simple trades... more Trading is a cornerstone of economic exchange and can take many different forms. In simple trades, one item is often exchanged for another; but in more complex trades, agents can trade different numbers of items, reflecting the differing value of the items being traded. Though young children regularly engage in simple trades, we examine whether they understand a key element involved in more complex trades—the idea that people may subjectively value the same item differently and accept trades that numerically disadvantage themselves in the service of acquiring more of a preferred item. To do so, we ran three studies with 5to 10-year-old children (N = 314) in which they were asked to predict whether a third party would accept or reject different types of trades. Results revealed that children across this age range predict that a third party will accept a numerically disadvantageous trade when they prefer one resource over another, but not when they have an equal preference for both re...
Judgment and Decision Making, 2017
People often object to inequity; they react negatively to receiving less than others (disadvantag... more People often object to inequity; they react negatively to receiving less than others (disadvantageous inequity aversion), and more than others (advantageous inequity aversion). Here we study people’s folk intuitions about inequity aversion: what do people infer about others’ fairness concerns, when they observe their reactions to disadvantageous or advantageous inequity? We hypothesized that, people would not intuitively regard disadvantageous inequity aversion by itself as being rooted in fairness, but they would regard advantageous inequity aversion by itself as being rooted in fairness. In four studies, we used vignettes describing inequity aversion of a made up alien species to assess people’s folk intuitions about inequity aversion. The studies supported our main hypothesis that disadvantageous inequity aversion, without advantageous inequity aversion, does not fit people’s folk conception of fairness. Instead, participants reported it to be rooted in envy. According to...
Developmental Psychology
Secrets carry valuable social information. Because the content of secrets can be damaging to the ... more Secrets carry valuable social information. Because the content of secrets can be damaging to the secret-keeper’s reputation, people should only disclose their secrets to people whom they trust. Therefore, tracking which people know each other’s secrets can be used as cue of social relationships: If one person tells another person a secret, those people are likely friends. Here, in 5 studies with 3- to 12-year-old children (total N = 452), we examined the developmental trajectory of reasoning about secret sharing as an indication of third-party friendship. By age 6, but not before, children expected that a person would be friends with someone that she told a secret. We replicated this main finding across four studies by comparing secret sharing to other cues of affiliation. Children treated sharing a secret as a stronger cue to friendship than sharing a physical object (Study 1), sharing a fact (Studies 2–4), or sharing membership on the same sports team (Study 3). Although younger children did not understand that secret sharing indicated friendship, they did expect people to be more likely to disclose their secrets to friends than to nonfriends (Study 5). Taken together, our results indicate that children understand the social significance of sharing secrets and use secret sharing to make important predictions about the social world. Specifically, children infer social relationships based on which people know each other’s secrets and expect others to share secrets selectivity with friends.
Behavioral and Brain Sciences
Satisfying one's obligations is an important part of being human. However, people's oblig... more Satisfying one's obligations is an important part of being human. However, people's obligations can often prescribe contradictory behaviors. Moral obligations conflict (loyalty vs. fairness), and so do obligations to different groups (country vs. family when one is called to war). We propose that a broader framework is needed to account for how people balance different social and moral obligations.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
People try to avoid appearing dishonest. Although efforts to avoid appearing dishonest can often ... more People try to avoid appearing dishonest. Although efforts to avoid appearing dishonest can often reduce lying, we argue that, at times, the desire to appear honest can actually lead people to lie. We hypothesize that people may lie to appear honest in cases where the truth is highly favorable to them, such that telling the truth might make them appear dishonest to others. A series of studies provided robust evidence for our hypothesis. Lawyers, university students, and MTurk and Prolific participants said that they would have underreported extremely favorable outcomes in real-world scenarios (Studies 1a-1d). They did so to avoid appearing dishonest. Furthermore, in a novel behavioral paradigm involving a chance game with monetary prizes, participants who received in private a very large number of wins reported fewer wins than they received; they lied and incurred a monetary cost to avoid looking like liars (Studies 2a-2c). Finally, we show that people's concern that others would think that they have overreported is valid (Studies 3a-3b). We discuss our findings in relation to the literatures on dishonesty and on reputation.
Child Development
Condemnation is ubiquitous in the social world and adults treat condemnation as a costly signal. ... more Condemnation is ubiquitous in the social world and adults treat condemnation as a costly signal. We explore when children begin to treat condemnation as a signal by presenting 4- to 9-year-old children (N = 435) with stories involving a condemner of stealing and a noncondemner. Children were asked to predict who would be more likely to steal as well as who should be punished more harshly for stealing. In five studies, we found that 7- to 9-year-old children treat condemnation as a signal-thinking that a condemner is less likely to steal and should be punished more harshly if caught hypocritically stealing later. We discuss the implications of these results for children's emerging understanding of signaling and moral condemnation.
Cognitive Science
If you are kind to me, I am likely to reciprocate and doing so feels fair. Many theories of socia... more If you are kind to me, I am likely to reciprocate and doing so feels fair. Many theories of social exchange assume that such reciprocity and fairness are well aligned with one another. We argue that this correspondence between reciprocity and fairness is restricted to interpersonal dyads and does not govern more complex multilateral interactions. When multiple people are involved, reciprocity leads to partiality, which may be seen as unfair by outsiders. 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.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
Abstract In contexts where fairness is important, people attempt to avoid the appearance of parti... more Abstract In contexts where fairness is important, people attempt to avoid the appearance of partiality. Although such efforts to avoid appearing partial can often reduce biases, we argue that, at times, such efforts can actually lead people to be biased against their friends. We theorize that people do so because they recognize that benefitting their friends may be viewed by others as partial. This argument makes two key predictions, which we investigated in eight studies using workplace scenarios. First, we predicted and found that, when the decision was public, allocators were reluctant to give a bonus to a deserving employee when that employee was a friend rather than a non-friend. In private, however, participants were willing to give the bonus to the deserving person whether she was a friend or a non-friend, suggesting that their public behavior was aimed at avoiding the appearance of bias. Second, we predicted and found that allocators' reluctance to give a bonus to a deserving friend is mediated by their beliefs that others would find this behavior to be unfair. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of this bias resulting from a desire to avoid appearing partial.
SSRN Electronic Journal
Making appropriate evaluations of rule-breakers requires not only knowledge of the rule in questi... more Making appropriate evaluations of rule-breakers requires not only knowledge of the rule in question, but also an understanding of the intent behind the given rule. In many cases, it can be acceptable to break a rule (the strict “letter of a rule”) if this does not violate the reason the rule was created (the “spirit of the rule”). Making these distinctions is critical for a developed normative understanding of rules, yet there has been little work that has examined when children develop this ability. While there has been a wealth of research on children’s understanding of rules and the intentions of rule-beakers, no one has examined their understanding of the intentions behind rules—the spirit of the rule. Here, we investigate if and when children begin to believe that it is less wrong to violate the letter of a rule if one does not violate the rule’s spirit. Participants (N = 240, 4- to 10-year-olds) were asked to evaluate a rule-breaker either who violated the letter of a rule, but not the spirit or who violated the letter and spirit of a rule. We find that, all children recognized the rule had technically been broken in both cases, but they were much less likely to make negative evaluations of someone for violating a rule if they only broke the letter of the rule, without violating the spirit of the rule. We also find that children increasingly differentiate between violations of the letter of a rule and violations of the spirit of a rule as they mature. We discuss how these studies provide insight into children’s early normative understanding.
Trends in cognitive sciences, 2018
Until recently, many psychologists were skeptical that young children cared about reputation. New... more Until recently, many psychologists were skeptical that young children cared about reputation. New evidence suggests that by age five, children begin to understand the broad importance of reputation and to engage in surprisingly sophisticated impression management. These findings prompt exciting new questions about the development of a fundamental social competency.
Cognitive Science, 2017
Successful and repeated cooperation requires fairly sharing the spoils of joint endeavors. Fair d... more Successful and repeated cooperation requires fairly sharing the spoils of joint endeavors. Fair distribution is often done according to preferences for equitable outcomes even though strictly equitable outcomes can lead to inefficient waste. In addition to preferences about the outcome itself, decision makers are also sensitive to the attributions others might make about them as a result of their choice. We develop a novel mathematical model where decision makers turn their capacity to infer latent desires and beliefs from the behavior of others (theoryof-mind) towards themselves, anticipating the judgments others will make about them. Using this model we can construct a preference to be seen as impartial and integrate it with preferences for equitable and efficient outcomes. We test this model in two studies where the anticipated attribution of impartiality is ambiguous: when one agent is more deserving than the other and when unbiased procedures for distribution are made available...
Journal of experimental psychology. Applied, Jan 19, 2018
Workers tend to be dissatisfied when their peers receive more than them for doing the same work. ... more Workers tend to be dissatisfied when their peers receive more than them for doing the same work. The fear of creating such dissatisfaction may cause leaders in organizations to waste resources that cannot be allocated equally between their workers. Here we explore the effectiveness of a procedure designed to reduce such waste by empowering workers with the agency to decide whether or not to pay other workers more. We predict that workers' sense of agency reduces their dissatisfaction with others' better outcomes. Seven studies supported this prediction by demonstrating that agentic participants, who were involved in creating allocations, tended to be more satisfied with others' better outcomes than nonagentic participants, who were not involved in creating allocations. Longitudinal lab studies, measuring real behavior, showed that agentic participants remained more satisfied than nonagentic ones even five weeks after their initial decision. The findings provided evidence...
Condemnation is ubiquitous in the social world and adults treat condemnation as a costly signal. ... more Condemnation is ubiquitous in the social world and adults treat condemnation as a costly signal. We explore when children begin to treat condemnation as a signal by presenting 4-to 9-year-old children (N = 435) with stories involving a condemner of stealing and a noncondemner. Children were asked to predict who would be more likely to steal as well as who should be punished more harshly for stealing. In five studies, we found that 7-to 9-year-old children treat condemnation as a signal-thinking that a condemner is less likely to steal and should be punished more harshly if caught hypocritically stealing later. We discuss the implications of these results for children's emerging understanding of signaling and moral condemnation.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2015
Two central principles that guide resource-allocation decisions are equity (providing equal pay f... more Two central principles that guide resource-allocation decisions are equity (providing equal pay for equal work) and efficiency (not wasting resources). When these two principles conflict with one another, people will often waste resources to avoid inequity. We suggest that people wish to avoid inequity not because they find it inherently unfair, but because they want to avoid the appearance of partiality associated with it. We explore one way to reduce waste by reducing the perceived partiality of inequitable allocations. Specifically, we hypothesize that people will be more likely to favor an efficient (albeit inequitable) allocation if it puts them in a disadvantaged position than if it puts others in a disadvantaged position. To test this hypothesis, we asked participants to choose between giving some extra resource to one person (thereby creating inequity between this person and equally deserving others) and not giving the resource to anyone (thereby wasting the resource). Six studies, using realistic scenarios and behavioral paradigms, provide robust evidence for a self-disadvantaging effect: Allocators were consistently more likely to create inequity to avoid wasting resources when the resulting inequity would put them at a relative disadvantage than when it would put others at a relative disadvantage. We further find that this self-disadvantaging effect is a direct result of people's concern about appearing partial. Our findings suggest the importance of impartiality even in distributive justice, thereby bridging a gap between the distributive and procedural justice literatures. (PsycINFO Database Record
People often object to inequity; they react negatively to receiving less than others (disadvantag... more People often object to inequity; they react negatively to receiving less than others (disadvantageous inequity aversion), and more than others (advantageous inequity aversion). Here we study people's folk intuitions about inequity aversion: what do people infer about others' fairness concerns, when they observe their reactions to disadvantageous or advantageous inequity? We hypothesized that, people would not intuitively regard disadvantageous inequity aversion by itself as being rooted in fairness, but they would regard advantageous inequity aversion by itself as being rooted in fairness. In four studies, we used vignettes describing inequity aversion of a made up alien species to assess people's folk intuitions about inequity aversion. The studies supported our main hypothesis that disadvantageous inequity aversion, without advantageous inequity aversion, does not fit people's folk conception of fairness. Instead, participants reported it to be rooted in envy. According to these results, the claim that disadvantageous inequity aversion reveals a concern with fairness, does not readily accord with people's intuitions. We connect these findings to other pieces of evidence in the literatures of behavioral economics, developmental psychology, and social psychology, indicating that lay people's intuitions may be on the mark in this case. Specifically, unlike advantageous inequity aversion, disadvantageous inequity aversion need not be rooted in a sense of fairness.