Evidence map›Paper›PMID 39242970›Full record

ArticleCommunications psychology2024

Deliberately ignoring inequality to avoid rejecting unfair offers.

Konstantin Offer, Dorothee Mischkowski, Zoe Rahwan, Christoph Engel

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Communications psychology, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
1citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

1 citing paper in PubMed.

  1. Reciprocating trust in Registered Reports.Communications psychology · 2024
    Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

4 authors.

Konstantin OfferMax Planck Institute for Human Development, Center for Adaptive Rationality (ARC), Lentzeallee 94, 14195, Berlin, Germany. offer@mpib-berlin.mpg.de.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5488-1312
Dorothee MischkowskiMax Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, Bonn, Germany.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7563-402X
Zoe RahwanMax Planck Institute for Human Development, Center for Adaptive Rationality (ARC), Lentzeallee 94, 14195, Berlin, Germany.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1506-0105
Christoph EngelMax Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, Bonn, Germany.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8513-8532

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Why do people punish experienced unfairness if it induces costs for both the punisher and punished person(s) without any direct material benefits for the punisher? Economic theories of fairness propose that punishers experience disutility from disadvantageous inequality and punish in order to establish equality in outcomes. We tested these theories in a modified Ultimatum Game (N = 1370) by examining whether people avoid the urge to reject unfair offers, and thereby punish the proposer, by deliberately blinding themselves to unfairness. We found that 53% of participants deliberately ignored whether they had received an unfair offer. Among these participants, only 6% of offers were rejected. As expected, participants who actively sought information rejected significantly more unfair offers (39%). Averaging these rejection rates to 21%, no significant difference to the rejection rate by participants who were directly informed about unfairness was found, contrary to our hypothesis. We interpret these findings as evidence for sorting behavior: People who punish experienced unfairness seek information about it, while those who do not punish deliberately ignore it.

Identifiers

PMID39242970
PMCPMC11332100

What OpenQuestion holds

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Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.