Judgments of social justice: Compromises between equality and efficiency.

Abstract

Political economists agree that a trade-offexists between equality and efficiency. Using a hypothetical society paradigm, we manipulated the mean income (representing efficiency) and income variability (representing equality) of distributions of wealth and the correlation between wealth and effort within a society. Subjects made all pairwise comparisons of distributions within societies of differing meritocracy. A "maximin" principle best described trade-off resolution strategies when effort and outcome were weakly linked: People maximized the minimum standard of living within a society. A compromise principle best described preferences when income was tightly linked to effort: People rejected distributions in which some citizens fell below the "poverty line" but maximized efficiency above this constraint. Ideological polarization was pronounced under moderate meritocracy; here liberals could focus on the role of chance and conservatives on the role of effort and ability.

The Friendly Taking Effect: How Interpersonal Closeness Leads to Seemingly Selfish Yet Jointly Maximizing Choice

“…Further, maximizing total benefits may not have been their only concern. First, participants may have had an aversion to extreme inequality (Mitchell et al 1993;Shaw 2013;Shaw and Knobe 2013), which would result from maximizing total benefit. The results offer some support for this suggestion because participants chose allocations that got each person roughly the same number of minutes.…”

“…In study 6, we explore two boundary conditions of the friendly taking effect. First, people have a preference for equal outcomes, and this preference can sometimes conflict with maximizing other-benefits (Mitchell et al 1993;Shaw 2013;Shaw and Knobe 2013). In our previous studies, we reduced concern with equality by intentionally excluding an equal-allocation option.…”

Trade-offs in fairness and preference judgments

“…It builds on earlier work by Mitchell, Tetlock, Mellers, and Ordonez (1992) that examined the judged fairness of hypothetical societies. In those experiments, societies were displayed as income distributions, that is, average incomes in each quartile.…”

Social Inequality and System-Justifying Function of Compensatory Judgments in Person Perception

“…In other words, some evaluate the legitimacy based on equality (i.e., equal amounts to each person) while others evaluate it on equity (i.e., proportionate amounts to each person on the basis of his/her inputs) (e.g., Mitchell, Tetlock, Mellers, & Ordonez, 1993). From the perspective of equity norms, the person who possesses a great ability to achieve an excellent outcome may be considered to deserve a high evaluation on warmth, which is a central and crucial personality dimension.…”