27 September 2021

“That wasn’t fair!” – a common reaction from someone who loses in a competition. But the winner rarely complains. Research at Linköping University has shown that participants in competitive situations, such as a recruitment process, more readily accept the results if they have received information that the process has been fair. They also become less selfish.

Counting money
The researchers studied egoistic behaviour. Photographer: PATCHARIN SAENLAKON

Psychological research shows that people tend to attribute successes to their internal abilities, while they blame failures on external circumstances such as unfair processes. Previous experimental studies have found that egotistical and immoral behaviour increases when processes have been unfair. The study from Linköping University shows that the same tendencies can emerge in competitive processes where none of the participants have had any advantage or disadvantage.

“When we fail, we overestimate how unfair the situation has been. This increases the risk that we become more egotistical and immoral. For instance, it can result in employees starting to trash talk their colleagues in a recruitment process”, says Kajsa Hansson, doctoral student in economics at Linköping University’s Department of Management and Engineering (IEI) and JEDI Lab. Photo credit Thor Balkhed

The researchers at Linköping University wanted to investigate whether a selfish behaviour can be affected by providing information about the procedural fairness in a competitive situation. The results have been published in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization.

For the study, the researchers recruited 444 participants, who were assigned to compete against each other by solving mathematical tasks of different levels of difficulty. After the competition, each participant was informed if they had won or lost against their counterpart. To examine selfish and altruistic behavior, participants were then given the opportunity to redistribute these tokens between them and their opponent. More specifically, the losers of each competition were given the opportunity to take an amount from the winner prize, while winners were asked to decide how much they much money they wanted to give away to the losers. They also investigated whether information about the procedural fairness in the competition affected how winners and losers distributed money between each other.

The results showed that the losers took less money from the winner if they received information that the competition was fair. Thus, the information made them less selfish. Losers who were not given any information about the fairness in the competition overestimated how unfair the competition had been. However, the winners’ behaviour was not affected at all by them receiving information that the competition had been fair.

“We see that uncertainty about the fairness in a competitive situation makes people more selfish. But information and transparency can reduce this type of behaviour. The take-home message from this study is that if we want to create a more ethical and fair society implementing fair processes is important – but informing people about this procedural fairness can be just as important”, says Kajsa Hansson.

In addition to Kajsa Hansson, two researchers from Linköping University, Emil Persson and Gustav Tinghög, as well as Shai Davidai from Columbia Business School, contributed to the study.

Article:
Losing sense of Fairness: How information about a level playing field reduces selfish behavior. Kajsa Hansson, Emil Persson, Shai Davidai, Gustav Tinghög (2021). Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization. Published online 9 August 2021.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2021.07.014


Research group

News about economy

Four persons in chairs on a stage.

AI can boost financial decision making

Do you have limited financial knowledge, or prefer not to think about financial issues? Then there is great potential that AI can help, according to LiU researcher Kinga Barrafrem.

Portrait of professor Gustav Tinghög.

Emotions often defeat sense in healthcare priority setting

Emotions tend to get the upper hand in healthcare decisions. This is shown in a Linköping University study. The results may explain why effective use of healthcare resources is so slow in the making, according to the researchers.

Chess piece and mirror.

Moral illusions may alter our behaviour

Moral illusions can fool our decision-making ability, making us more selfish. But the results also show that we are more likely to vote for the good of all when taking part in democratic decisions.

Latest news from LiU

Johanna Rosén.

Johanna Rosén elected to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

Linköping professor Johanna Rosén has been elected as a new member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, KVA, in the class for engineering sciences. She is one of five new members.

Person (Twan Bakker) standing infront of an MRI-machine.

Visualisation of blood flow sharpens artificial heart

Using magnetic cameras, researchers at LiU have examined blood flow in an artificial heart in real time. The results make it possible to design the heart in a way to reduce the risk of blood clots and red blood cells breakdown.

A person standing on a stair.

Carrying the torch of not burning plastic

He is the navy officer who chose to do a Master of Science in Engineering. More than 20 years later, Mattias Philipsson is leading the way for plastic in Sweden to become more circular. This Alumnus of the Year 2025 is not done yet.