Effects of Allocator's Satisfied Motive of Fairness on Verbal Messages for Recipients at Reward Allocation

Abstract

It is plausible that allocator usually motivates to allocate rewards fairly. The purpose of this study was to examine the prediction that allocator would more give recipients the verbal messages as psychological reward at monetary reward allocation when the perceived fairness of the reward allocation by allocator was low than it was high. In this study, fairness was manipulated by changing of the recipients' performances, abilities, and efforts and the allocators' expectation of maintaining the allocator-recipients relationship. Subjects (N=122) were under graduate students. The results partly supported the hypothesis. The fairness was lower in the unequal ability condition than in the equal ability condition. There was no difference between these conditions in the total messages, while the messages implying psychological reward were given more in the low fairness condition than in the high fairness condition. And, these messages were influenced by the perceived fairness. However, the effect of these messages on the improvement of fairness was marginally significant.