Unfair Outcomes Research Articles

A Motivated Account of How Attributions of Passion Serve to Legitimize the Poor Treatment of Workers

The pursuit of passion in one’s work is touted in contemporary discourse. We suggest that this cultural emphasis may serve to facilitate the legitimization of poor worker treatment, and that this process may be motivated by system- and status-legitimizing beliefs. Study 1 found that people do in fact deem poor worker treatment (e.g., asking workers to do uncomfortable tasks that are irrelevant to their job description, asking workers to work extra hours without pay) as more legitimate when workers are presumed to be “passionate” about their work. This effect was mediated by a set of rationale – beliefs that, for passionate workers, work itself is its own reward and assumptions that passionate workers would have volunteered for this work if given the chance. We also found support for the motivational account: (1) participants who held strong beliefs in a just world showed a tendency to rely on the set of rationale to legitimize exploiting passionate workers (Study 1) and (2) participants with a high social dominance orientation were more likely to legitimize exploiting low-status (vs. high-status) workers, and in turn endorse the set of rationale to justify this action (Study 2). Taken together, although passion appears a positive attribute to assume in others, it can also license poor treatments of workers, especially for people who are motivated to justify unfair outcomes and group inequality.

Measuring the Accessibility and Equality of Civil Justice

While, in the UK, attitudes to the criminal justice system have been routinely investigated less effort has been made to measure attitudes to the civil justice system. However, globally, there are increasingly numerous examples of studies of attitudes to civil justice. Robust standardised scales are important to establishing change and difference between groups; for example, in the context of United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 16.3. Past focus has been on developing ‘composite indicators’. This paper sees the application of modern psychometric methods to the construction of ‘reflective’ instruments to measure single unidimensional attitude dimensions. Drawing on relevant theoretical frameworks, we administered an item pool of 35 attitude questions to a sample of 1061 adults across England and Wales. Principal component analysis was used to identify attitude domains, followed by Rasch analysis to construct scales with acceptable psychometric properties. An Inaccessibility of Justice (IOJ) scale and a Perceived Inequality of Justice (PIJ) scale resulted. Respondents who regarded themselves as having handled past civil legal problems poorly or having experienced unfair outcomes had higher IOJ and PIJ scores. Negative accounts of lawyers or courts from others were also associated with higher scores. Our substantive findings help explain how negative experiences of problem resolution can result in ‘frustrated resignation’ for later problems, and show the importance of positive experiences and accounts of the justice system in maintaining public support. The scales have broad justice policy utility and the methods provide a template for future related scale development.

Fair or Unfair Algorithmic Differentiation? Luck Egalitarianism As a Lens for Evaluating Algorithmic Decision-Making.

Differentiation is often intrinsic to the functioning of algorithms. Within large data sets, ‘differentiating grounds’, such as correlations or patterns, are found, which in turn, can be applied by decision-makers to distinguish between individuals or groups of individuals. As the use of algorithms becomes more wide-spread, the chance that algorithmic forms of differentiation result in unfair outcomes increases. Intuitively, certain (random) algorithmic, classification acts, and the decisions that are based on them, seem to run counter to the fundamental notion of equality. It nevertheless remains difficult to articulate why exactly we find certain forms of algorithmic differentiation fair or unfair, vis-a-vis the general principle of equality. Concentrating on Dworkin’s notions brute and option luck, this discussion paper presents a luck egalitarian perspective as a potential approach for making this evaluation possible. The paper then considers whether this perspective can also inform us with regard to the interpretation of EU data protection legislation, and the General Data Protection Regulation in particular. Considering data protection’s direct focus on the data processes underlying algorithms, the GDPR might, when informed by egalitarian notions, form a more practically feasible way of governing algorithmic inequalities.

Telomere length and procedural justice predict stress reactivity responses to unfair outcomes in African Americans

This experiment demonstrates that chromosomal telomere length (TL) moderates response to injustice among African Americans. Based on worldview verification theory – an emerging psychosocial framework for understanding stress – we predicted that acute stress responses would be most pronounced when individual-level expectancies for justice were discordant with justice experiences. Healthy African Americans (N=118; 30% male; M age=31.63years) provided dried blood spot samples that were assayed for TL, and completed a social-evaluative stressor task during which high versus low levels of distributive (outcome) and procedural (decision process) justice were simultaneously manipulated. African Americans with longer telomeres appeared more resilient (in emotional and neuroendocrine response–higher DHEAs:cortisol) to receiving an unfair outcome when a fair decision process was used, whereas African Americans with shorter telomeres appeared more resilient when an unfair decision process was used. TL may indicate personal histories of adversity and associated stress-related expectancies that influence responses to injustice.

Developmental Differences in Infants' Fairness Expectations From 6 to 15Months of Age.

The present research investigated the developmental trajectory of infants' fairness expectations from 6 to 15months of age (N=150). Findings revealed a developmental transition in infants' fairness expectations between 6 and 12months, as indicated by enhanced visual attention to unfair outcomes of resource distribution events (a 3:1 distribution) relative to fair outcomes (a 2:2 distribution). The onset of naturalistic sharing behavior predicted infants' fairness expectations at transitional ages. Beyond this period of developmental transition, the presence of siblings and infants' prompted giving behavior predicted individual differences in infants' fairness concerns. These results provide evidence for the role of experience in the acquisition of fairness expectations and reveal early individual differences in such expectations.

Takamore v. Clarke: Tikanga and Merits-Based Resolution of Burial Disputes, a Just Outcome?

Burial disputes are something of a novelty in New Zealand. Most are resolved amicably by those with ties to the deceased. The exception to this has been the long-running case of Takamore v. Clarke, the matter finally being resolved by the Supreme Court this year. Burial disputes raise fundamental issues of religious and cultural identity (including tikanga Maori), personhood, and the meaning of family. Despite their rarity in New Zealand, the response of the law in resolving such disputes should “fit the fuss”, having regard to the context in which they arise. This essay begins by discussing the form of resolution advocated for by the majority and minority in Takamore. Their respective approaches are essentially the same, especially with regards to tikanga Maori. This is one of Court intervention coupled with a merits-based assessment of the dispute. However the Court failed to apprehend there was no pressing need for burial, prior to creating a solution of general application. The experience of comparable jurisdictions, where speedy resolution has been necessary (such as Australia) demonstrates that the role of the Court applying such a test in burial disputes is misconceived. Rather than providing “justice” for the parties concerned, merits-based resolution produces unfair and unconvincing outcomes. The more just response is to ensure the parties never get to Court, via mediation. Insofar as agreement is not possible, the role of the Court should be supervisory in the application of a prescriptive test emphasising expediency and ensuring the dispute is resolved out of Court.

Signaling and Efficiency in Gift Exchange: An Application to Tipping

In the gift exchange principal–agent game, other-regarding preferences can be sufficient to support an efficient equilibrium with a strictly positive transfer. When the agent is uncertain about the altruism of the principal or the extent to which the principal adheres to social norms, however, he chooses a suboptimal level of effort to insure himself against unfair outcomes. I demonstrate that under certain conditions, a relatively simple change to the structure of the game allows the principal to costlessly signal his type and restores efficiency. I argue that this result has implications for the design of gratuity-based service industries. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Signaling and Efficiency in Gift Exchange: An Application to Tipping

In the gift exchange principal-agent game, other-regarding preferences are sufficient to support an efficient equilibrium with a strictly positive transfer. When the agent is uncertain about the altruism of the principal, however, he chooses a suboptimal level of effort to insure himself against unfair outcomes. I demonstrate that, under certain conditions, a relatively simple change to the structure of the game allows the principal to costlessly signal his type and restores efficiency. I argue that this result has implications for the design of gratuity-based service industries.

Prosecuting hate crime: procedural issues and the future of the aggravated offences

In 2012, the Ministry of Justice asked the Law Commission to examine the case for extending the racially and religiously aggravated offences in the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, so that they also cover disability, sexual orientation and transgender identity. The terms of reference for the project were narrow, and did not include an examination of whether the existing offences are in need of reform. The Commission recommended that before a final decision is taken as to whether the offences should be extended, a full-scale review of the operation of the existing offences should be carried out. This paper contends that, in determining the future of the aggravated offences, consideration should be given to the procedural difficulties that can be encountered during the prosecution stage of the criminal process. The paper highlights a number of significant procedural problems that arise from the structure of the existing aggravated offences. These problems are largely related to alternative charges, whereby the prosecution charge both the aggravated offence and the lesser offence encompassed within it, and alternative verdicts, whereby the jury can convict of the lesser offence if the aggravated element is not proven. This paper argues that the procedural problems, coupled with a failure to properly understand the offences, can lead, and have led, to unfair outcomes. If the offences cannot be prosecuted effectively, they become little more than an empty gesture to those affected by hate crime, and this may be counterproductive. Procedural problems also put defendants at risk of wrongful conviction. The paper concludes that the preferred way forward would be to repeal the racially and religiously aggravated offences and rely on sentencing legislation to deal with hostility-based offending.

Health equity in humanitarian emergencies: a role for evidence aid.

Humanitarian emergencies require a range of planned and coordinated actions: security, healthcare, and, as this article highlights, health equity responses. Health equity is an evidence-based science that aims to address unfair and unjust health inequality outcomes. New approaches are using health equity to guide the development of community programs, equity methods are being used to identify disadvantaged groups that may face health inequities in a humanitarian emergency, and equity is being used to prevent unintended harms and consequences in interventions. Limitations to health equity approaches include acquiring sufficient data to make equity interpretations, integrating disadvantage populations in to the equity approach, and ensuring buy-in from decision-makers. This article uses examples from World Health Organization, Refugee Health Guidelines and Health Impact Assessment to demonstrate the emerging role for health equity in humanitarian emergencies. It is based on a presentation at the Evidence Aid Symposium, on 20 September 2014, at Hyderabad, India.

Assured Rewards Facilitate Non-Intervention in Unfair Situations by High Psychopathy Individuals

Although third-party punishment plays a crucial role in the maintenance of reciprocal cooperative relationships in human society, for various reasons such punishment is not consistently levied even when it may be appropriate to do so. The present study investigated the effects of external incentives and psychopathy on non-intervention in a situation where third-party punishment would be warranted. Forty participants who completed a measure to assess psychopathy participated in an experiment in which they had to choose either to punish social norm violators as third-parties, to help victims, or to refrain from correcting the unfair outcomes, under conditions where non-intervention was either rewarded or punished. Results showed that frequency of non-intervention decreased in a condition where there were assured punishments with non-intervention, with participants more likely to intervene in the unfair situation as a third-party. On the other hand, frequency of non-intervention increased when there was assured rewards for non-intervention, with many participants failing to correct the unfair outcomes. Additionally, this tendency was accentuated in high psychopathy individuals. The implications of these results for future research on the cultivation and continuation of reciprocal human relationship is discussed.

Does willful ignorance deflect punishment? – An experimental study

This paper studies whether people can avoid punishment by remaining willfully ignorant about possible negative consequences of their actions for others. We employ a laboratory experiment, using modified dictator games in which a dictator can remain willfully ignorant about the payoff consequences of his decision for a receiver. A third party can punish the dictator after observing the dictator’s decision and the resulting payoffs. On the one hand, willfully ignorant dictators are punished less if their actions lead to unfair outcomes than dictators who reveal the consequences before implementing the same outcome. On the other hand, willfully ignorant dictators are punished more than revealing dictators if their actions do not lead to unfair outcomes. We conclude that willful ignorance can circumvent blame when unfair outcomes result, but that the act of remaining willfully ignorant is itself punished, regardless of the outcome.

Does willful ignorance deflect punishment? – An experimental study

This paper studies whether people can avoid punishment by remaining willfully ignorant about possible negative consequences of their actions for others. We employ a laboratory experiment, using modified dictator games, in which a dictator can remain willfully ignorant about the payoff consequences of his decision for a receiver. A third party can punish the dictator after observing the dictator׳s decision and the resulting payoffs. On the one hand, willfully ignorant dictators are punished less if their actions lead to unfair outcomes than dictators who reveal the consequences before implementing the same outcome. On the other hand, willfully ignorant dictators are punished more than revealing dictators if their actions lead to fair outcomes. We conclude that willful ignorance can circumvent blame when unfair outcomes result, but that the act of remaining willfully ignorant is itself punished, regardless of the outcome. Models of procedural fairness combining ex ante and ex post fairness qualitatively predict the observed punishment pattern.

Organizational respect dampens the impact of group‐based relative deprivation on willingness to protest pay cuts

Although group-based relative deprivation predicts people's willingness to protest unfair outcomes, perceiving that one's subgroup is respected increases employees' support for organizations. An integration of these perspectives suggests that subgroup respect will dampen the impact of group-based relative deprivation on workers' responses to unfair organizational outcomes. We examined this hypothesis among university faculty (N=804) who underwent a system-wide pay cut. As expected, group-based relative deprivation predicted protest intentions. This relationship was, however, muted among those who believed university administrators treated their area of expertise (i.e., their subgroup) with a high (vs. low) level of respect. Moderated mediation analyses confirmed that group-based relative deprivation had a conditional indirect effect on protest intentions via participants' (dis)identification with their university at low to moderate, but not high, levels of subgroup respect. Our finding that satisfying relational needs can attenuate responses to group-based relative deprivation demonstrates the benefits of integrating insights from distinct research traditions.

Correcting vindictive bidding behaviors in sponsored search auctions

In this study, we aim to develop a pricing mechanism that reduces the effects resulted by vindictive advertisers who bid on sponsored search auctions run by search engine providers. In particular, we aim to ensure payment fairness and price stability in these auctions. With the generalized second price principle, advertisers pay the next-ranked bid value rather than the price that they bid. Vindictive bidders take advantage of this principle to manipulate the payment of a previously-ranked advertiser. Vindictive bidding results in unfair outcomes and eliminates equilibria. However, it is difficult to compute rational payments for all advertisers as advertisers' valuations are private. Our proposed mechanism decreases the payment to make up for the utility loss that is induced by vindictive bidding. The vindictive advertiser is simultaneously punished with an additional payment. According to our theoretical analyses and simulations, the proposed mechanism efficiently decreases the effects that result from vindictive bidding, and guarantees equilibrium outcomes.

Five-year-olds understand fair as equal in a mini-ultimatum game

In studies of children’s resource distribution, it is almost always the case that “fair” means an equal amount for all. In the mini-ultimatum game, players are confronted with situations in which fair does not always mean equal, and so the recipient of an offer needs to take into account the alternatives the proposer had available to her or him. Because of its forced-choice design, the mini-ultimatum game measures sensitivity to unfair intentions in addition to unfair outcomes. In the current study, we gave a mini-ultimatum game to 5-year-old children, allowing us to determine the nature of fairness sensitivity at a period after false belief awareness is typically passed and before formal schooling begins. The only situation in which responders rejected offers was when the proposer could have made an equal offer. But unlike adults, they did not employ more sophisticated notions of fairness that take into account the choices facing the proposer. Proposers, in their turn, were also not adult-like in that they had a very poor understanding that responders would reject unequal offers when an equal one was available. Thus, preschool children seem to understand “fair=equal” in this task, but not much more, and they are not yet skillful at anticipating what others will find fair beyond 50/50 splits.

Does Willful Ignorance Deflect Punishment? - An Experimental Study

This paper studies whether people can avoid punishment by remaining willfully ignorant about possible negative consequences of their actions for others. We employ a laboratory experiment, using modified dictator games, in which a dictator can remain willfully ignorant about the payoff consequences of his decision for a receiver. A third party can punish the dictator after observing the dictator’s decision and the resulting payoffs. On the one hand, willfully ignorant dictators are punished less if their actions lead to unfair outcomes than dictators who reveal the consequences before implementing the same outcome. On the other hand, willfully ignorant dictators are punished more than revealing dictators if their actions lead to fair outcomes. We conclude that willful ignorance can circumvent blame when unfair outcomes result, but that the act of remaining willfully ignorant is itself punished, regardless of the outcome. Models of procedural fairness combining ex ante and ex post fairness qualitatively predict the observed punishment pattern.

Corrective Justice and Copyright Infringement

This Article demonstrates that one important goal of copyright infringement cases is the achievement of corrective justice. The importance of corrective justice to the copyright system is demonstrated by the law’s continual reliance on a bilateral litigation model. Sadly, because scholars and lawmakers often conceive of copyright in solely economic terms, corrective justice is often overlooked and demonstrable unfairness occurs as a result. This Article discusses three areas of contemporary copyright law where the failure to consider corrective justice leads to unfair outcomes: the provision of statutory damages in civil copyright claims, the availability of attorney’s fees, and mass copyright settlements.

Politics versus Risk in Allocations of Federal Security Grants

Distributive political theory is applied to whether politics versus risk determines government spending across four grant programs purposed for homeland security. A model of security funding is tested with data from U.S. states from 2004 to 2006. Findings support politics over risk when programs are designed to award universal benefits to elected officials, such as with fair-sharing policies. However, risk explains funding when programs award narrow, particularistic benefits, such as with urban security initiatives. A key conclusion is that fair-share strategies in grant politics can actually produce unfair allocation outcomes in the area of security. Also, protecting status quo formulas is in the interest of political actors, especially if they might otherwise lose opportunities to secure resources for constituents (state and local governments) in a distressed economy.

Shifting the blame to a powerless intermediary

We extend the results of Bartling and Fischbacher (Rev. Econ. Stud. 79(1):67–87, 2012) by showing that, by delegating to an intermediary, a dictator facing an allocation decision can effectively shift blame onto the delegee even when doing so necessarily eliminates the possibility of a fair outcome. Dictators choosing selfishly via an intermediary are punished less and earn greater profits than those who do so directly. Despite being powerless to influence the fairness of the outcome, an intermediary given the choice between two unfair outcomes is punished more than when the dictator chooses one directly. This is not the case when the intermediary merely can initiate the random selection of one of the outcomes. Our findings reinforce and clarify the usefulness of agency as a tool to evade perceived culpability.