群体共同经历影响不公平感知

以往研究考察了不公平经历如何影响个体的认知、情绪及行为。然而, 这些研究着重于考察个体“独自经历”不公平的现象, 而尚未有研究考察, 当个体与他人以群体身份共同经历不公平时, 不公平经历对个体的影响。3项实验采用改编的三人最后通牒博弈任务考察“群体共同经历”不公平如何影响个体的不公平感知。研究结果表明, 无论是通过“共同命运” (实验1)、轮流为群体做决策(实验2), 还是招募成对朋友(实验3)来操纵或凸显群体身份, 群体共同经历不公平, 相比独自经历不公平, 均显著降低(而非提升)了被试的不公平感知。研究结果对于社会及组织管理具有借鉴意义。

Effect of group membership on unfairness perception under coexperience conditions

A large body of research examined the effect of experiencing unfairness on an individual’s unfairness perception. However, the literature primarily focuses on experiencing unfairness at the individual level. A dearth of research investigating the effect of coexperiencing unfairness with others exists. The present study examined the effect of coexperiencing unfairness with another group member on unfairness perception. Three experiments were designed to test two competing hypotheses. The first hypothesis derived from the “reference change” view, which posited that coexperiencing unfairness with other group members would decrease unfairness perception. The second hypothesis derived from group membership research, which posited that coexperiencing unfairness with other group members would increase unfairness perception. In Experiment 1, the participants were assigned to one of three conditions, that is, the experiencing unfairness alone condition (the “alone condition”), coexperiencing unfairness with another individual condition (the “individual coexperience condition”), and the coexperiencing unfairness with another group member condition (the “group coexperience condition”). In the alone condition, the participant acting as the responder was allocated a small amount of money (e.g., RMB 2 out of RMB 10) by the proposer in a two-person ultimatum game. The participant was instructed to decide whether to accept or reject the allocation for her/himself. One proposer and two responders were involved in the two coexperience conditions, in which the two responders were allocated a small amount of money (e.g., each responder received RMB 2 out of RMB 12) by the proposer in a three-person ultimatum game. In other words, the two responders coexperienced unfairness. In contrast to the individual coexperience condition, in which the participants were told to make a decision for themselves, the participants in the group coexperience condition were informed that the two responders formed a group and thus needed to make a decision (i.e., to accept or reject the allocation) for the group. Furthermore, payoff commonality was employed to enhance group membership. Specifically, the participants in the group coexperience condition were told that “if one of you rejects the allocation, then both of you and the proposer will obtain nothing in the trial.” The results of the experiment showed that coexperiencing unfairness with another group member decreased unfairness perception and the rejection rate for the unfair allocation compared with experiencing unfairness alone. In Experiment 2, group membership was manipulated by asking the participants to make a decision for the group in turn. The results duplicated the findings on unfairness perception from Experiment 1. The results also showed that the group coexperience condition decreased the rejection rate for the unfair allocation compared with the alone condition, but the results did not reach statistical significance. In Experiment 3, two group coexperience conditions (i.e., a group of strangers and a group of friends) were examined. The results demonstrated that the participants in both group coexperience conditions reported a lower unfairness perception than those in the alone condition. Similar to Experiment 2, coexperiencing unfairness with either strangers or friends decreased the rejection rate for the unfair allocation, but the results did not reach statistical significance. These results have certain implications for reducing individuals’ unfairness perception in social contexts.