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Economic experiments have shown that human incentives are not only limited to the profit-maximizing principle but also motivated by fairness. Those studies presuppose that individuals commit to fixed value systems and that experimental institutions invoke fairness ideals. This paper shows that participants strategically select fairness ideals advantageous for self-distribution. Participants whose relative earnings are higher than those of their pairs adhere to a liberalist fairness ideal, whereas those with lower relative earnings prefer an egalitarian distribution of money. This reflects that individuals commit opportunistic behavior as a result of resolving a cognitive dissonance between material utility and fairness.

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Untersuchungen über die Methode der Sozialwissenschaften, und der politischen Ökonomie insbesondere Menger 1883 Zur Methodologie der Staats-und Sozialwissenschaften