Benefiting from Inequity Promotes Prosociality

People care about fairness. In our interpersonal relationships, we strive to maintain an equitable balance of costs and benefits (Fiske, 1991), and even in economic games with strangers people are reluctant to maximize their earnings at equity’s expense (Bolton, Katok, & Zwick, 1998; Fehr & Schmidt, 1999; Rabin, 1993). Indeed, a concern with equity may be part of our evolutionary heritage, as an inclination to return favors can confer adaptive benefits when individuals’ reputations are known (Axelrod, 1984; Trivers, 1971). The central role that notions of equity play in our relations with others suggests that feeling that one has been treated inequitably should have important consequences for behavior. Indeed, feeling that one has been the victim of inequitable treatment can license people to act more selfishly. In one study, for example, people who had just unfairly been denied a bonus payment allocated themselves a larger portion of a shared payment on a hypothetical subsequent task (Zitek, Jordan, Monin, & Leach, 2010). This research is consistent with the notion that just as people seek equity in their interpersonal relationships, they may also strive to maintain “equity with the world” (Austin & Walster, 1975). According to this view, people expect to get what they deserve (and to deserve what they get) not just in relation to specific others, but also across different relationships. Being unfairly denied a deserved bonus therefore justifies one in “balancing the scales” by subsequently taking more from others (Zitek et al., 2010; see also Nisan, 1990, 1991). Most relevant for the current research, this perspective predicts that those who have benefited from unfair treatment—by, for example, receiving an overpayment or undeserved bonus—should subsequently act more generously, because they have received an undeserved benefit that must now be “balanced out.” Some evidence supporting this hypothesis comes from a study in which people were led to believe that based on their qualifications they were either being over-paid or equitably paid for an interviewing job. When pay was hourly, the over-paid completed more interviews per hour than the equitably paid; when pay was piece-rate (i.e., per interview), the over-paid conducted fewer interviews per hour (Adams & Rosenbaum, 1962). The authors argued that the over-paid participants were motivated to reduce the discomfort of iniquitous overpayment by working faster (in the hourly-pay condition) or more thoroughly (in the piece-rate condition).