Deliberately ignoring inequality to avoid rejecting unfair offers

Abstract

Why do people punish experienced unfairness if it induces costs for both the punisher and punished person(s) without any direct material benefits for the punisher? Economic theories of fairness propose that punishers experience disutility from disadvantageous inequality and punish in order to establish equality in outcomes. We tested these theories in a modified Ultimatum Game (N = 1370) by examining whether people avoid the urge to reject unfair offers, and thereby punish the proposer, by deliberately blinding themselves to unfairness. We found that 53% of participants deliberately ignored whether they had received an unfair offer. Among these participants, only 6% of offers were rejected. As expected, participants who actively sought information rejected significantly more unfair offers (39%). Averaging these rejection rates to 21%, no significant difference to the rejection rate by participants who were directly informed about unfairness was found, contrary to our hypothesis. We interpret these findings as evidence for sorting behavior: People who punish experienced unfairness seek information about it, while those who do not punish deliberately ignore it. The Stage 1 protocol for this Registered Report was accepted in principle on 13 October 2023. The protocol, as accepted by the journal, can be found at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.24559132.v1 . Players in the ultimatum game who deliberately choose to be ignorant about whether they received an unfair offer are more likely to accept unfair offers than participants who actively choose to know.