Evolving Norms of Market Fairness: Stable Mechanisms and Shifting Standards in a Contemporary Replication of Kahneman et al. (1986)

= 1,016) of Kahneman et al.'s 1986 study of market fairness, using original and modernized scenarios in crowdworker and general-population samples. The cognitive machinery of fairness has barely changed in four decades: participants treated existing prices and wages as entitlements, judged pay cuts more harshly than equivalent withheld raises, and condemned firms exploiting market power. The fairness norms themselves, however, have shifted, and in different directions across market domains. Relative to 1986, the odds of objecting to price increases fell by roughly 40% to 55% in every sample, whereas only the younger crowdworker samples objected more to employer actions; the general-population panel showed no such shift. Fairness pairs stable mechanisms with standards that adapt to the economy, challenging theories that treat it as a single, fixed preference.