Accountability and the fairness bias: the effects of effort vs. luck

Experience and Perception of Social Mobility – A Cross-Country Test of the Self-Serving Bias

“…This is also in line with a more general finding in the experimental literature that people are more tolerant of inequality when they believe it to be the result of effort, rather than luck (e.g. Rey-Biel et al (2018), Cappelen et al (2017), Lefgren et al (2016), Durante et al (2014), Becker (2013), Cappelen et al (2013), Krawczyk (2010)). People who view their society as more economically mobile and believe that one can work their way up the income ladder through effort and hard work, tend to be less concerned about economic outcomes and, in turn, favour lower levels of redistribution of those outcomes.…”

Tax compliance depends on voice of taxpayers

“…The effort task is a simplified version of the tasks implemented in Rauhut and Winter (2010) and in Becker (2013). Participants' previous knowledge of Klimt's life might have influenced the performance, however, this is not essential as the task was used to determine individual incomes which should differ on the base of individual achievement.…”

The Acceptability of Accountability

“…A recent experiment by Becker (2013) focuses specifically on the luck/effort trade off, though her prime interest is in the effect of the type of luck on people's principles (she considers wage luck, endowment luck and payment luck -essentially framing differences). She concludes that "Our results suggest that normative beliefs about which share should be taken are driven mostly by the factor that subjects' can be held responsible for, namely effort, whereas actual behavior sometimes deviates from this norm dependent on which type of luck is introduced."…”