共同经历不公平降低个体的不公平感知

以往鲜有研究考察个体与他人共同经历不公平如何影响其不公平感知。本研究实验1~2采用最后通牒博弈任务考察个体独自经历,以及与他人共同经历不公平时的不公平感知。结果表明,共同经历不公平,相比独自经历不公平,降低了个体的不公平感知。实验3采用眼动技术考察共同经历不公平降低个体不公平感知的内部心理机制,结果表明,个体越关注共同经历者的收益,其不公平感知越低,该结果支持社会比较的观点。

Sharing unfairness decreases unfairness perception

In daily life,people often co-experience unfairness along with others.Previous research has examined the effect of experiencing unfairness alone on an individual’s unfairness perception.However,there is a dearth of research focusing on examining the effect of co-experiencing unfairness with others on unfairness perception.Such co-experience of unfairness is important not only because of its likely prevalence in day-to-day situations,but also because it is able to address a theoretically important question.That is,does the presence of a co-experiencer decrease the unfairness perception and therefore serve a protective role of mitigating the consequences of being unfairly treated?Three studies were designed to investigate whether and why the co-experience of unfairness with others affected individuals’unfairness perception.Specifically,we proposed that people would perceive lower unfairness when they co-experienced unfairness with others,compared to when they experienced the unfairness alone;this is because in the co-experience of unfairness individuals would pay more attention to the similar others(the other responder)than to the proposer.In Study 1,participants were randomly assigned to a 2(co-experience,alone)×2(fairness,unfairness)betweensubject design to play the Ultimatum Game(UG),where the participants acted as the responders.In the co-experience of unfairness condition,the proposer kept the majority of the money for himself or herself(e.g.,8 of the 12 RMB),while allocating a very small proportion to the two responders(e.g.,each of the responders obtained 2 of the 12 RMB).In the unfairness alone condition,the proposer allocated more money to himself or herself,as well as to the other responder(e.g.,5 of the 12 RMB for each of them)than to the participant who also acted as a responder(the remaining 2 of 12 RMB).In the co-experience of fairness condition,the proposer allocated the money to himself or herself,as well as to the other two responders equally(e.g.,each of them obtained 4 of the 12 RMB).In the fairness alone condition,the proposer allocated much more money to himself or herself and to the participant(e.g.,each one obtained 5 of the 12 RMB)than to the other responder(obtained 2 of the 12 RMB).The results provided persuasive evidence for the hypothesis that the co-experience of unfairness decreased the perception of unfairness.Study 2 replicated these findings by controlling the amount of money that the participants obtained in the co-experience of unfairness condition and the alone condition.Study 2 also ruled out one possible explanation for the findings,that is,that it was the experience of unfairness alone that increased the unfairness perception.Using an eye-tracking system,Study 3 showed that when participants co-experienced unfairness with others,much of their attention,as indexed by dwell time,fixation count,and transitions,was paid to the gains of the other responder,leading to the lower unfairness perception that they reported.These results support the hypotheses that people perceive lower unfairness when they co-experience unfairness with others because they pay more attention to the similar others(the other responder)than to the proposer.The results have implications for reducing an individual’s unfairness perception in social contexts.