Fairness Norms Research Articles

Labor Market of Regular Workers in Japan: A Perspective from Job Advertisement Data

We present an analysis of wages and labor market tightness for regular workers (full-time permanent workers) in Japan, utilizing a novel dataset of online job advertisements spanning the period from 2015 to 2022. Despite the importance of online job advertisements for the labor market, little has been studied for the case of Japan. Our study documents labor market conditions reflected in online job advertisement data and investigates how posted wages are related to the labor market tightness, and how they affect actual wages of existing workers. The results uncover several aspects of the labor market which are not captured by official statistics. First, we find that posted wages for regular workers increased at a pace faster than wages for existing regular workers in the sample period, with some heterogeneity across industries and skill requirements. Second, we find that the estimated job-filling rate observed from the dataset declined in recent years, which suggests difficulties that firms faced in hiring workers, and that this was associated with an increase in posted wages. Third, we find that an increase in posted wages positively affects the wages of existing regular workers after some time lag. Our empirical findings suggest that spillovers are driven by underlying mechanisms such as retention of existing workers, and fairness norms to maintain a balance in wages between newly hired workers and existing workers.

Fairness Deliberations and Fair Allocations in Symmetric and Asymmetric Bargaining–An Experimental Study on Group Decisions in Germany and China

AbstractThe study’s primary focus is on examining fairness deliberations of bargainers in Germany and in China under symmetric and asymmetric bargaining power to understand whether they incorporate fairness into their decision process and, if so, how this affects bargaining outcomes. To this end, we conducted an incentivized ultimatum bargaining experiment with symmetric and asymmetric outside options. Groups (N = 142) of three persons interact as proposers and responders in dyads and decide simultaneously on their offer or which offers to accept or reject. Communication between parties is inhibited. We videotaped in-group discussions; the resulting transcripts were text analyzed by eliciting whether groups make fairness an issue, which fairness norms they discuss, and whether they use fairness-related perspective-taking to overcome the communication constraint. We find that asymmetry of bargaining power in favor of the proposer leads to lower offers relative to the symmetric situation. Not all groups make fairness an issue, and fairness deliberations alone have no significant impact on offers. However, when associated with the equal-payoff norm, and in Chinese groups in particular, discussing fairness increases offers in symmetric but also in asymmetric situations, in which other fairness norms could have been applied, too. Fairness-related perspective-taking is used by German and Chinese groups and is associated with higher offers in the former. Our study makes an epistemological and related methodological contribution: a possibly biased interpretation of bargaining outcomes can be mitigated if information on decision processes and underlying mechanisms were available.

Tipping the balance between fairness and efficiency through temporoparietal stimulation

Maximizing the welfare of society requires distributing goods between groups of people with different preferences. Such decisions are difficult because different moral principles impose irreconcilable solutions. For example, utilitarian efficiency (maximize overall outcome across individuals) may need trade-off against Rawlsian fairness norms (maximize the outcome for the worst-off individual). We identify a brain mechanism enabling decision-makers to solve such trade-offs between efficiency and fairness using separate neuroimaging and sham-controlled brain stimulation experiments. As activity in the temporoparietal junction (TPJ) increases, people are more likely to implement the Rawlsian fairness criterion rather than efficiency or inequality concerns. Strikingly, reducing TPJ excitability with brain stimulation reduces the concern for fairness in fairness-efficiency trade-offs. Moreover, the reduced fairness concerns statistically relate to stimulation-induced reductions in perspective-taking skills as measured in a separate task. Together, our findings not only reveal the neural underpinning of efficiency-fairness trade-offs but also recast the role of TPJ in social decision-making by showing that its perspective-taking function serves to promote fairness for the worst-off rather than efficiency or equality.

Render help or stand by? The effect of group size on third-party punishment and its neural mechanisms

Third-party punishment (TPP) is the punishment that an individual executes on a violator as a third party or observer to maintain social norms. Many studies have provided insights into the neural mechanisms of third-party punishment in group environments. Still, only some studies have focused on the neural mechanisms of third-party punishment in different group sizes. This study used EEG analysis to explore the effects of group size on third-party punishment and its neural activity characteristics from the context of gain and loss. The results show that the punishment rate and amount of the third party in the small group size and loss context were significantly higher than that in the large group size and gain context. EEG results showed that third-party punishment in small groups induced greater P2 than in large groups. In the loss context, the third-party punishment in the large group size induced more negative LNP and activated more theta band activation than in the small group. The results showed that the motivation of the third party to seek a positive reputation in the small size exceeds the balance of its economic interests and tends to punish the violator for maintaining fair norms. The loss context plays a promoting role in this process. However, in the large size, the third-party consideration of its interests was stronger than the willingness to maintain social norms. This study provided neuroscientific evidence for third-party punishment to maintain fair norms in a group environment and further explanations from neuroscience for understanding Indirect Reciprocity Theory.

Receivers’ responses are integrated into costly third-party punishment in a way that interacts with the unfairness of allocations

Costly third-party punishment (TPP) is an effective way to enforce fairness norms and promote cooperation. Recent studies have shown that the third party considers not only the proposer’s suggested allocation but also the receiver’s response to the allocation, which was typically ignored in traditional TPP studies when making punishment decisions. However, it remains unclear whether and how the varying unfair allocations and receivers’ responses are integrated into third-party punishment. The current study addressed these issues at behavioral and electrophysiological levels by employing a modified third-party punishment task involving proposers’ highly or moderately unfair allocations and the receivers’ acceptance or rejection responses. At the behavioral level, participants punished proposers more often when receivers rejected relative to accepted unfair allocations. This effect was further modulated by the unfairness degree of allocations, indicated by a more pronounced rejection-sensitive effect when participants observed the moderately unfair offers. Electrophysiologically, when the receiver rejected the moderately unfair allocations, a stronger late-stage component P300/LPP, which was considered to be involved in allocations of attention resources, was found. Meanwhile, separated from the P300/LPP, the P200 associated with early attention capture demonstrated a rejection-sensitive effect. Together, in the costly TPP studies, the receiver is typically designated as passive and silent, and her/his responses to unfairness are conventionally ignored. However, our results indicate that except for the proposer’s distribution behavior, the receiver’s response does have an impact on third-party punishment in a way that interacts with the unfairness of allocations.

The promoting effect of the absence of second-party's punishment power on third-party punishment in maintaining social fairness norms: An EEG hyper-scanning study

Third-party punishment (TPP) plays an irreplaceable role in maintaining social fairness. Punishment power is a significant area of study within economic games. However, the impact of whether or not the second-party possesses punishment power on TPP remains unexplored. The present study utilizes the high temporal resolution of EEG and time-frequency analysis, intra-barin functional connectivity analysis, inter-brain synchronization (IBS) analysis, and granger causality analysis(GCA) to comprehensively explore the neural mechanism of TPP from the perspective of third-party individual's decision-making and IBS in the real-time social interaction. Time-frequency results found that, the absence of the punishment power activated more theta-band and alpha-band power compare to when second-party has punishment power. When second-party has no punishment power, functional connection results observed stronger functional connectivity in theta band for medium unfair offers between rTPJ and PFC. Dual-brain analysis revealed that when the second-party has no punishment power, there is a significantly higher IBS in the alpha band between the frontal and frontal-central lobes of the second-party and the parietal and parietal occipital lobes of the third-party. GCA results further showed that the direction of IBS from third-party to second-party was significantly stronger than from second-party to third-party. This study demonstrates that the absence of the second-party's punishment power promote TPP, and similar cognitive process of thinking on how to maintain social fairness enhances IBS. The current study emphasizes the influence of punishment power on TPP, broadens the research perspective and contributes crucial insights into maintain social fairness.

Norms of Fairness and Generosity Among People Experiencing Homelessness: A Dictator Game Field Experiment

Society often ascribes negative stereotypes to people experiencing homelessness. However, people experiencing homelessness have been found to display highly nuanced social behaviors. We employ a field dictator game to examine prosocial behavior among 173 unhoused individuals in Nashville, TN. We test whether an unhoused population displays ingroup bias, wherein they are more generous toward other people experiencing homelessness (the hypothesized ingroup) than people not experiencing homelessness (the hypothesized out-group). Additionally, we explore relationships between sociodemographic and personal characteristics (social support, perceptions of deservedness/generosity) and dictator game behavior. We did not observe ingroup bias. However, on average, participants allocated 29% of their game endowment to recipients, consistent with cross-cultural dictator game studies. We found that the duration of homelessness, social support, and gender were associated with dictator game allocations. Additionally, people experiencing homelessness were more generous when they perceived other unhoused individuals would be more generous and deserving.

La ontogenia de la cognición cooperativa y las normas de equidad en dilemas distributivos

This paper explores a naturalistic and culturally situated perspective on the ontogeny of cooperative cognition and fairness norms in distributive dilemmas involving the allocation of resources. According to this approach, the process of decision-making in distributive dilemmas is grounded on general considerations about others’ well-being and the respect for everyone's interests and rights in conflictive interactions. The sense of fairness is also conceived as the outcome of social interactions and is modulated by contextual factors. However, I claim that the human sense of fairness in distributive dilemmas is certainly bounded by concrete principles that govern its expression and guide the establishment of reasonable, generalizable, and prescriptive solutions in cooperative situations. This logic is broadly confirmed by multiple pieces of evidence coming from evolutionary-informed and cross-cultural studies within behavioral sciences. Finally, I suggest that cooperative cognition and fairness norms in distributive dilemmas must be explored as scientifically relevant issues that are independent of ideological assumptions on the matter that usually end up in problematic interpretations of the empirical data.

Exploring normative frameworks of fairness through (relational) institutional habitus in Oxford's undergraduate admissions process.

In the UK's stratified HE system the question of who is able to access the most selective and prestigious universities is fraught with issues of fairness. This paper explores how decision-makers in Oxford's undergraduate admissions process construct norms of fairness and how such norms inform their reflexive considerations and actions around admissions decisions. Framing such norms as multiple institutional habituses, the paper considers how decision-makers compromise and negotiate between institutional habituses in tension. Further, it presents an augmented conception of institutional habitus - the relational institutional habitus - which offers a conceptual tool to make sense of the existence of multiple contested institutional norms and their partial and fragile reconciliation in institutional action.

Qualitative analysis of the factors associated with whistleblowing intentions among athletes from six European countries.

Although whistleblowing is thought to represent an effective mechanism for detecting and uncovering doping in sport, it has yet to become a widely adopted practice. Understanding the factors that encourage or discourage whistleblowing is of vital importance for the promotion of this practice and the development of pedagogical material to enhance the likelihood of whistleblowing. The current study employed a qualitative methodology to explore the personal and organisational factors that underpin intentions to blow the whistle or that may lead to engagement in whistleblowing behaviours in sport. Thirty-three competitive athletes across a range of sports took part in a semi-structured interview which sought to explore what they would do should they encounter a doping scenario. Content analysis revealed that whistleblowing is a dynamic process characterised by the interaction of a range of personal and organisational factors in determining the intention to report PED use. These factors included moral reasoning, a desire to keep the matter "in-house", perceived personal costs, institutional attitudes to doping, and social support. Analysis revealed a number of "intervening events", including a perceived lack of organisational protection (e.g., ethical leadership) within some sporting sub-cultures, which present an important obstacle to whistleblowing. The intention to report doping was underpinned by a "fairness-loyalty trade-off" which involved athletes choosing to adhere to either fairness norms (which relate to a sense that all people and groups are treated equally) or loyalty norms (which reflect preferential treatment towards an in-group) when deciding whether they would blow the whistle. The promotion of fairness norms that emphasise a group's collective interests might encourage athletes to view whistleblowing as a means of increasing group cohesiveness and effectiveness and thereby increase the likelihood of this practice.

Aligning Learning Certification Patterns with the Academic Calendar in Benin’s Secondary Education: A Requisite for Ensuring Fairness in EFL Student Evaluation

The official school calendar in Benin, governed by the Law on Education (2003-17) and the annual joint ministerial decree, is inconstantly implemented, leading to two various evaluation patterns that affect differently private and public schools learning scores and decision-making, including English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students. This research aims to assess the current evaluation patterns in terms of impacts and recommend aligning the learning certification mechanism with the academic calendar to ensure fairness in EFL student evaluation. A mixed-methods approach is employed with 80 participants from secondary schools in the Cotonou region. The results, analysed using descriptive statistics, content analysis (Neuendorf, 2017), and thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006; Krippendorff, 2018) techniques, show that 65% of participants are dissatisfied with the evaluation device and organisation in public secondary education for violating the law, the decree and the norm of fairness in evaluation. NVivo software (Version 12) was used to facilitate the coding process and the organisation of emerging themes. A significant positive correlation was found between the school calendar implementation's constancy and students' EFL academic performance (r = 0.45, p < 0.01). The recommendations include unifying the school calendar, developing clear evaluation criteria, establishing transparent decision-making processes, and continuous monitoring, evaluation, and technology integration.

Village Fairness Norms and Land-Rental Markets

Abstract This paper documents the role of village fairness norms in land markets. A strong and robust relationship is established between experimentally elicited village-level fairness norms and land-rental rates across 250 Malawian villages. Stronger fairness norms correlate with a tighter range in village rental rates. The study suggests that the fairness norms for tenants appear to be more important, constraining the land-rental price range by a price ceiling rather than a price floor. The results further indicate that rented-in fields are of lower agronomic quality than owner-cultivated fields, but do not find any statistically significant relationship between the fairness norms and land-rental activity in the village.

Sex-based differences in fairness norm compliance and neural circuitry.

Human behavior often aligns with fairness norms, either voluntarily or under external pressure, like sanctions. Prior research has identified distinct neural activation patterns associated with voluntary and sanction-based compliance or non-compliance with fairness norms. However, an investigation gap exists into potential neural connectivity patterns and sex-based differences. To address this, we conducted a study using a monetary allocation game and functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine how neural activity and connectivity differ between sexes across three norm compliance conditions: voluntary, sanction-based, and voluntary post-sanctions. Fifty-five adults (27 females) participated, revealing that punishment influenced decisions, leading to strategic calculations and reduced generosity in voluntary compliance post-sanctions. Moreover, there were sex-based differences in neural activation and connectivity across the different compliance conditions. Specifically, the connectivity between the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and right dorsal anterior insular appeared to mediate intuitive preferences, with variations across norm compliance conditions and sexes. These findings imply potential sex-based differences in intuitive motivation for diverse norm compliance conditions. Our insights contribute to a better understanding of the neural pathways involved in fairness norm compliance and clarify sex-based differences, offering implications for future investigations into psychiatric and neurological disorders characterized by atypical socialization and mentalizing.

Disrupting the Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex Attenuates the Difference in Decision-Making for Altruistic Punishment Between the Gain and Loss Contexts.

Altruistic punishment is a primary response to social norms violations; its neural mechanism has also attracted extensive research attention. In the present studies, we applied a low-frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) to the bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) while participants engaged in a modified Ultimatum Game (Study 1) and third-party punishment game (Study 2) to explore how the bilateral DLPFC disruption affects people's perception of violation of fairness norms and altruistic punishment decision in the gain and loss contexts. Typically, punishers intervene more often against and show more social outrage towards Dictators/Proposers who unfairly distribute losses than those who unfairly share gains. We found that disrupting the function of the left DLPFC in the second-party punishment and the bilateral DLPFC in the third-party punishment with rTMS effectively obliterated this difference, making participants punish unfairly shared gains as often as they usually would punish unfairly shared losses. In the altruistic punishment of maintaining the social fairness norms, the inhibition of the right DLPFC function will affect the deviation of individual information integration ability; the inhibition of the left DLPFC function will affect the assessment of the degree of violation of fairness norms and weaken impulse control, leading to attenuate the moderating effect of gain and loss contexts on altruistic punishment. Our findings emphasize that DLPFC is closely related to altruistic punishment and provide causal neuroscientific evidence.

Enforcement of Fairness Norms by Punishment: A Comparison of Gains and Losses.

Although in everyday life decisions about losses are prevalent (e.g., the climate crisis and the COVID-19 crisis), there is hardly any research on decisions in the loss domain. Therefore, we conducted online experiments with a sample of 672 participants (mostly students), using third-party punishment dictator games (DGs) in the loss domain to explore the impact of losses and punishment threats on the conformity to the fairness norm. Subjects in the treatment condition have to divide a loss of -10 € with the threat of a third-party punishment with different strengths (control: gains, no punishment). Overall, the statistical evidence seems rather weak, but when it comes to losses, subjects are more rational and straightforward with their words and deeds than with gains. Therefore, in the loss domain, subjects are more likely to believe that the fairness norm should be followed, and they subjectively perceive that the others do as well. Furthermore, although dictators' decisions are more selfish in the loss domain, dictators there react more strongly to the punishment threat by reducing their demands than in the gains domain. This holds as long as the punishment threat is strong enough, as judged from a rational perspective.

Group membership and adolescents' third-party punishment: a moderated chain mediation model.

Third-party punishment (TPP) reflects people's social preference for fairness norms and is fundamental to maintaining fairness norms on a large scale. Several empirical studies have shown that the offender's group membership impacts TPP, but the detailed mechanisms have yet to be fully elucidated. The current study used the third-party punishment game task to explore the relationship between group membership, perceived unfairness, anger, and adolescents' TPP. A total of 306 teenagers aged 12 to 15 were chosen as subjects through cluster sampling. The results showed that group membership (classmate vs. stranger) and gender can affect adolescents' TPP together, which manifests as adolescents enacting significantly harsher punishments on strangers than on classmates, especially for boys. Group membership indirectly affects TPP through the mediating effects of perceived unfairness, anger and through a chain mediation of perceived unfairness and anger. Moreover, gender positively moderate the relationship between group membership and perceived unfairness. Specifically, group membership significantly affects boys' perceived unfairness, but cannot predict girls' perceived unfairness. The above results can be used to guide adolescents toward appropriate justice concepts and moral awareness, thus enhancing TPP.

Development of altruism in preschoolers: From empathic concern to compliance with fairness norms

Development of altruism in preschoolers: From empathic concern to compliance with fairness norms

Causal roles ofprefrontal andtemporo-parietal theta oscillations forinequity aversion.

The right temporo-parietal junction (rTPJ) and the right lateral prefrontal cortex (rLPFC) are known to play prominent roles in human social behaviour. However, it remains unknown which brain rhythms in these regions contribute to trading-off fairness norms against selfish interests as well as whether the influence of these oscillations depends on whether fairness violations are advantageous or disadvantageous for a decision maker. To answer these questions, we used non-invasive transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) to determine which brain rhythms in rTPJ and rLPFC are causally involved in moderating aversion to advantageous and disadvantageous inequity. Our results show that theta oscillations in rTPJ strengthen the aversion to unequal splits, which is statistically mediated by the rTPJ's role for perspective taking. In contrast, theta tACS over rLPFC enhanced the preference for outcome-maximizing unequal choices more strongly for disadvantageous compared to advantageous outcome distributions. Taken together, we provide evidence that neural oscillations in rTPJ and rLPFC have distinct causal roles in implementing inequity aversion, which can be explained by their involvement in distinct psychological processes.

Understanding the role of individual- and community-based resources in disaster preparedness

Standard emergency management practice in the U.S measures disaster preparedness as an individual household attribute based on amounts of stocked supplies, hazard mitigation actions, and emergency planning. Such measures generally fail to consider how norms of trust, fairness, and reciprocity, as well as networks of social relationships—that is, social capital—can facilitate coordination and enable sharing and communal action in the face of disaster. Our study assesses how shared resources, social capital, and day-to-day resources (specifically, food and water) could influence earthquake disaster preparedness across different communities. Using Seattle as the site of investigation, the study involved a split-ballot experiment embedded in a mail survey of a random sample of households. These households were stratified by zip codes selected for their contrasting demographics (N = 1340). Half of the households in each zip code answered conventional individualistic measures of disaster preparedness, while the other half answered questions regarding resources they, their family, friends, and neighbors might share. In racial-majority-dominated zip codes, reported preparedness was higher when people were asked to consider shared resources. Disaster preparedness also appeared to be underestimated with the traditional measure. Households with greater bridging social capital (connections with individuals who differ in their social identity but who may share some similar interests) and longer neighborhood tenure also reported higher preparedness. Our findings suggest disaster preparedness efforts should focus on supplementing individual preparedness with daily resources, social capital, and collective shareable community assets—a focus that we call “mainstreaming.”

"Technical" Contributors and Authorship Distribution in Health Science.

In health sciences, technical contributions may be undervalued and excluded in the author byline. In this paper, I demonstrate how authorship is a historical construct which perpetuates systemic injustices including technical undervaluation. I make use of Pierre Bourdieu's conceptual work to demonstrate how the power dynamics at play in academia make it very challenging to change the habitual state or "habitus". To counter this, I argue that we must reconceive technical contributions to not be a priori less important based on its nature when assigning roles and opportunities leading to authorship. I make this argument based on two premises. First, science has evolved due to major information and biotechnological innovation; this requires 'technicians' to acquire and exercise a commensurate high degree of both technical and intellectual expertise which in turn increases the value of their contribution. I will illustrate this by providing a brief historical view of work statisticians, computer programmers/data scientists and laboratory technicians. Second, excluding or undervaluing this type of work is contrary to norms of responsibility, fairness and trustworthiness of the individual researchers and of teams in science. Although such norms are continuously tested because of power dynamics, their importance is central to ethical authorship practice and research integrity. While it may be argued that detailed disclosure of contributions (known as contributorship) increases accountability by clearly identifying who did what in the publication, I contend that this may unintentionally legitimize undervaluation of technical roles and may decrease integrity of science. Finally, this paper offers recommendations to promote ethical inclusion of technical contributors.