BORN TO BE FAIR

Fairness starts with reciprocity.   Two norms influence whether people contribute to the common good i.e. equity and equality. Equity means that each person receives benefits in proportion to what he or she has contributed (e.g., the person who does the most work gets the highest pay). Equality means that everyone gets the same amount. Both kinds of fairness are used and understood much more widely by humans than by any other animal. People are designed by nature (so to speak) to belong to a system based on fairness and social exchange. As one sign of the importance of fairness to human nature, the feeling that one has no value to others—that you are a taker rather than a giver—is a major cause of depression. To be sure, there are plenty of obnoxious people who take more than they give, but most of them don’t see themselves that way. People who do see themselves as taking more than they give may become depressed. To avoid depression, people may seek to contribute their fair share.

Some suicides may reflect the same concern with being fair and reciprocal. Human beings differ from most other animals in that they commit suicide. One reason some people commit suicide is that they think they are a burden on other people - that others do things for them that they cannot reciprocate, so the others would be better off if they were dead. Of course, people are not better off when someone commits suicide. Suicide has numerous negative effects on those left behind. Not only do the survivors miss the dead person, they may even blame themselves for the suicide.

The concern with fairness makes people feel bad when they don’t contribute their fair share, but it can also affect people who think that their good performance makes others feel bad. When we outperform others, we may have mixed emotions. On the one hand, we may feel a sense of pride and pleasure because we have surpassed the competition. On the other hand, we may feel fear and anxiety because those we have outperformed might reject us or retaliate. Interpersonal concern about the consequences of outperforming others has been called sensitivity about being the target of a threatening upward comparison. Outperformers often become distressed when they believe that others are envious that they did not perform as well. People do feel guilty when they are overbenefited. In lab studies, people feel guilty if they receive a larger reward than others for performing the same amount or same quality of work. Getting less than your fair share provokes anger and resentment, but getting more than your fair share produces guilt

The term survivor guilt was coined to refer to the observation that some people felt bad for having lived through terrible experiences in which many others died, such as the atomic bombing of Hiro-shima, Japan, or the death camps in Nazi-occupied Europe. People especially felt guilty about family members and other relationship partners who died while they survived. In business, when corporations are forced to fire many employees as part of downsizing, the ones who keep their jobs often feel guilty toward friends and colleagues who have lost theirs.All these findings suggest that the human psyche has a deep sensitivity to unfairness, and that people (unlike almost any other animals) feel bad even if the unfairness is in their favor.