Talk 2 Title:

Seeing and sanctioning structural unfairness

Talk 2 Abstract:

When a wrongdoing occurs, people can think about blame in two ways: as the result of “bad actors” (i.e., individuals who are responsible for the bad outcome) or “bad systems” (i.e., structural factors that are ultimately responsible for the outcome). In five studies (four U.S. online convenience, one U.S. representative sample), we examined how people ascribed responsibility, and subsequently punished, unfairness in an economic game. In Pilot 1A (N = 40), people interpreted unfair offers in an economic game as the result of a bad actor (vs. unfair rules), unless incentivized (Pilot 1B, N = 40), which, in Study 1 (N = 370), predicted costly punishment of individuals (vs. changing unfair rules). In Studies 2 (N = 500) and 3, (N = 470, representative of age, gender, and ethnicity in the U.S), we found that people paid to change the rules for the final round of the game (vs. punished individuals), when they were randomly assigned a bad system (vs. bad actor) explanation for prior identical unfair offers. This research suggests that how people understand, and ultimately explain, unfairness influences how they choose to sanction it.