Equity, Egoism, and Egocentrism: The Formation of Distributive Justice Judgments

Previous research on distributive justice judgments has come to the conclusion that these judgments are often formed based on an equity norm, or a self-serving, egoistic motive (e.g., Adams, 1965 ; Greenberg, 1983 ). In this article, we propose egocentrism as a third mechanism for the formation of t...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Basic and applied social psychology 2010-04, Vol.32 (2), p.155-164
Main Authors: Burrus, Jeremy, Mattern, Krista D.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biological and medical sciences
Distributive justice
Egocentrism
Egoism
Equity
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Judgment
Judgments
Justice
Perceptions
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Selfishness
Social attribution, perception and cognition
Social psychology
Social research
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Summary:Previous research on distributive justice judgments has come to the conclusion that these judgments are often formed based on an equity norm, or a self-serving, egoistic motive (e.g., Adams, 1965 ; Greenberg, 1983 ). In this article, we propose egocentrism as a third mechanism for the formation of these judgments. In two experiments, above and beyond the influence of equity, perceptions of distributive justice were influenced by egocentrism. Furthermore, egocentrism at times overpowered the effects of egoism. When egocentric perception of contribution was high, results were consistent with the notion that distributive justice judgments are egoistic. However, the effect of egoism was reversed when egocentric perception of contribution was low. Additional analyses suggest that these results were due to egocentric attentional processes.
ISSN:0197-3533
1532-4834
DOI:10.1080/01973531003738593