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 Adams , J. S. ( 1965 ). Inequity in social exchange . Advances in Experimental Social Psychology , 62 , 335 – 343 . [Google Scholar]; Greenberg, 1983 Greenberg , J. ( 1983 ). Overcoming egocentric bias in perceived fairness through self-awareness . Social Psychology Quarterly , 46 , 152 – 156 .[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). 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.