Equitable burden-sharing in "take-one-for-the-team" situations: The role of coordination.

Abstract

Groups frequently encounter situations where someone must "take one for the team"-that is, one member must undertake a task for the benefit of the group. When such tasks recur, how should the burdens be shared? This question becomes particularly complex when the cost of performing the task varies among members, creating a trade-off between efficiency and equity. For instance, always assigning the task to the member who can complete it at the lowest cost is efficient but inequitable. Our research examines how this trade-off is managed, using the framework of social dilemmas, specifically volunteer's dilemmas. Across three main experiments and three supplemental experiments (N = 1,789), we find that when participants imagine these situations, they prefer equitable (but inefficient) burden-sharing (Study 1). However, when they actually face these situations, their actions often deviate from this preference, with some members taking on more burdens than necessary to achieve equity (Study 2). Further investigation reveals that the main obstacle to equity is the difficulty of coordinating who takes on the task and when (Study 3). These findings contribute two key insights to research on fairness. First, they provide initial evidence that individuals tend to prefer equity when sharing indivisible burdens, contrasting with previous studies on distributive justice and social preferences, which have focused on divisible resources (e.g., money). Second, they highlight the critical role of coordination in achieving equitable burden-sharing-an aspect overlooked in prior research, which has focused on the role of coordination in group productivity rather than fairness. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).