Do You Prefer Having Much More or Slightly More than Others?

Abstract

Several studies found that people have a positive utility when they have more than others do. These papers claim that individuals are willing to sacrifice part of their absolute income or products in order to have more than others. As far as we know, the current paper is the first to show that positionality is bounded, so that individuals enjoy having more than others only when the gap between them and the others is not too large. Using the results from a survey-based experiment conducted in Israel that included 924 participants, we show that when individuals were asked to forgive some of their income in order to have a higher income compared to others, most of them chose to forgive their absolute income in order to have more than others. However, when individuals were asked to forgive the same amount of income in order to a have a much higher income compared to others, the attractiveness of having more than others significantly decreased. These results may indicate that individuals suffer from a disutility when extreme gaps exist in society, even if they are the ones with the high income.