Shared Experience and Third-Party Decisions: A Laboratory Result

We present an experiment designed to investigate three different mechanisms to achieve impartiality in distributive justice. We consider a first-person procedure, inspired by the Rawlsian veil of ignorance, and two third-party procedures, an involved spectator and a detached observer. First-person veiled stakeholders and involved spectators are affected by an initially unfair distribution that, in the stakeholders' case, is to be redressed. We find substantial differences in the redressing task. Detached observers propose significantly fairer redistributions than veiled stakeholders or involved spectators. Risk preferences partly explain why veiled stakeholders propose less egalitarian redistributions. Surprisingly, involved spectators, who are informed about their position in society, tendWe are grateful to the two editors and two referees for constructive advice that induced major revisions of the article.

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“…. In the laboratory, favoritism does not seem to arise solely due to a common experience’ (2010: 2, 14).…”

Section: Theoretical and Experimental Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Whose Impartiality? An Experimental Study of Veiled Stakeholders, Involved Spectators and Detached Observers

Aguiar

Becker²,

Moya³

2013

Economics and Philosophy

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“…Modern spectator studies 3 have similarly addressed these two questions, although the greater emphasis has clearly been on investigating the content of moral preferences, including altruism (Harbaugh et al 2007), distributive justice (Dickinson and Tiefenthaler 2002;Chavanne et al 2010a;Becchetti et al 2012), fair rewards from risk-taking (Huesch and Brady 2010;Cappelen et al forthcoming), fair distribution of losses from risk-taking (Cappelen et al 2011), reciprocity (Charness et al 2008;Croson and Konow 2009;Utikal and Fischbacher 2010), and the effects of moral bias (Traub et al 2005;Croson and Konow 2009;Chavanne et al 2010b). As with the larger empirical literature on social preferences that includes stakeholder studies, this research has usually been conducted under the presumption that general forces are at work and with the goal of contributing to models of those forces (Konow 2000;Charness and Rabin 2002).…”

Section: Goalsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although empirical spectator studies have maintained their distance from epistemic and metaethical inquiry, they have also addressed the role of information on spectator judgements (Konow 2009a(Konow , 2009b, possible spectator bias (e.g. Aguiar et al 2010;Chavanne et al 2010b), and differences between spectatorship and other concepts of impartiality such as Rawls's (1971) veil of ignorance (Herne and Mård 2008;Aguiar et al 2010). Many of these studies explicitly refer to Smith.…”

Section: Goalsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…8 Most other spectator experiments have adopted a similar method, although I am aware of two studies that deliberately implement potentially partial, as opposed to impartial, spectators with mixed results. In a three-player dictator game, Chavanne et al (2010b) vary whether initial stakes are earned or endowed, after which one subject, the spectator, can redistribute earnings between the other two. They find that the spectator's redistribution is unaffected by whether or not he shares with one of the recipients the same experience with respect to the initial stakes, i.e.…”

Section: Nobody Is Perfect Not Even Spectatorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Adam Smith and the Modern Science of Ethics

Konow¹

2012

Economics and Philosophy

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Third-party decision-makers, orspectators, have emerged as a useful empirical tool in modern social science research on moral motivation. Spectators of a sort also serve a central role in Adam Smith's moral theory. This paper compares these two types of spectatorship with respect to their goals, methodologies, visions of human nature and emphasis on moral rules. I find important similarities and differences and conclude that this comparison suggests significant opportunities for philosophical ethics to inform empirical and theoretical research on moral preferences and vice versa.

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“…We focus on the question under which conditions and to what extent fairness judgments by impartial decision makers are subject to stakeholders' influence. Closest to our study, Chavanne et al (2010) are interested in whether impartial decision makers are influenced in their decisions by shared experience with stakeholders.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fairness and Persuasion. How Stakeholder Communication Affects Impartial Decision Making

2014

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We study experimentally whether and to what extent impartial decision makers are influenced by stakeholders' fairness opinions in an allocation decision. The setting allows for different focal fairness rules to be considered. We compare communication treatments, in which one of the stakeholders states his or her opinion prior to the allocation decision, to a baseline without communication opportunities. We find that stakeholders who state their opinion in the communication treatments are allocated significantly less money than their counterparts in the baseline. Asymmetric reactions to the statements appear to be the driving force behind this result: impartial decision makers deviate from their initial fairness judgment and follow stakeholders' opinions only if the requests are moderate; they largely ignore high monetary claims. Our results contribute to understanding the underlying processes that may affect the decisions of judges, juries, arbitrators, referees, or other impartial decision makers in interaction with stakeholders.

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Shared Experience and Third-Party Decisions: A Laboratory Result

Cited by 4 publications

References 55 publications

Whose Impartiality? An Experimental Study of Veiled Stakeholders, Involved Spectators and Detached Observers

Whose Impartiality? An Experimental Study of Veiled Stakeholders, Involved Spectators and Detached Observers

Adam Smith and the Modern Science of Ethics

Fairness and Persuasion. How Stakeholder Communication Affects Impartial Decision Making

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