Justice and Generosity in Social Exchange: an Experimental Study of Reactions to Winning or Losing a Game

Abstract

It was predicted from exchange theory that distributive justice would be fulfilled in a game when a player with high investments defeated an opponent with low investments. Were the reverse to occur, the ‘low’ winner should feel embarrassment and the ‘high’ loser anger. This hypothesis was tested experimentally. Unacquainted boys whose leadership status was high or low raced model cars, winning or losing being predetermined. After racing, the boys were separately asked to divide a sum of money between them, which provided a measure of their anger or embarrassment over the outcome. The boys behaved in accordance with predictions in that high status boys who had lost to low status were less generous than low status who had lost to high status. Parallel results were obtained amongst the winners.