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When Fairness Is Not Enough: The Disproportionate Contributions of the Poor in a Collective Action Problem
Many of our most pressing challenges, from combating climate change to dealing with pandemics, are collective action problems: situations in which individual and collective interests conflict with each other. In such situations, people face a dilemma about making individually costly but collectively...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
American Psychological Association
2023
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10585937/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37471038 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xge0001455 |
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author | Malthouse, Eugene Pilgrim, Charlie Sgroi, Daniel Hills, Thomas T. |
author_facet | Malthouse, Eugene Pilgrim, Charlie Sgroi, Daniel Hills, Thomas T. |
author_sort | Malthouse, Eugene |
collection | PubMed |
description | Many of our most pressing challenges, from combating climate change to dealing with pandemics, are collective action problems: situations in which individual and collective interests conflict with each other. In such situations, people face a dilemma about making individually costly but collectively beneficial contributions to the common good. Understanding which factors influence people’s willingness to make these contributions is vital for the design of policies and institutions that support the attainment of collective goals. In this study, we investigate how inequalities, and different causes of inequalities, impact individual-level behavior and group-level outcomes. First, we find that what people judged to be fair was not enough to solve the collective action problem: if they acted according to what they thought was fair, they would collectively fail. Second, the level of wealth (rich vs. poor) altered what was judged to be a fair contribution to the public good more than the cause of wealth (merit vs. luck vs. uncertain). Contributions during the game reflected these fairness judgments, with poorer individuals consistently contributing a higher proportion of their wealth than richer participants, which further increased inequality—particularly in successful groups. Finally, the cause of one’s wealth was largely irrelevant, mattering most only when it was uncertain, as opposed to resulting from merit or luck. We discuss implications for policymakers and international climate change negotiations. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-10585937 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | American Psychological Association |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-105859372023-10-20 When Fairness Is Not Enough: The Disproportionate Contributions of the Poor in a Collective Action Problem Malthouse, Eugene Pilgrim, Charlie Sgroi, Daniel Hills, Thomas T. J Exp Psychol Gen Articles Many of our most pressing challenges, from combating climate change to dealing with pandemics, are collective action problems: situations in which individual and collective interests conflict with each other. In such situations, people face a dilemma about making individually costly but collectively beneficial contributions to the common good. Understanding which factors influence people’s willingness to make these contributions is vital for the design of policies and institutions that support the attainment of collective goals. In this study, we investigate how inequalities, and different causes of inequalities, impact individual-level behavior and group-level outcomes. First, we find that what people judged to be fair was not enough to solve the collective action problem: if they acted according to what they thought was fair, they would collectively fail. Second, the level of wealth (rich vs. poor) altered what was judged to be a fair contribution to the public good more than the cause of wealth (merit vs. luck vs. uncertain). Contributions during the game reflected these fairness judgments, with poorer individuals consistently contributing a higher proportion of their wealth than richer participants, which further increased inequality—particularly in successful groups. Finally, the cause of one’s wealth was largely irrelevant, mattering most only when it was uncertain, as opposed to resulting from merit or luck. We discuss implications for policymakers and international climate change negotiations. American Psychological Association 2023-07-20 2023-11 /pmc/articles/PMC10585937/ /pubmed/37471038 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xge0001455 Text en © 2023 The Author(s) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/This article has been published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Copyright for this article is retained by the authors. Authors grant the American Psychological Association the exclusive right to publish the article and identify itself as the original publisher. |
spellingShingle | Articles Malthouse, Eugene Pilgrim, Charlie Sgroi, Daniel Hills, Thomas T. When Fairness Is Not Enough: The Disproportionate Contributions of the Poor in a Collective Action Problem |
title | When Fairness Is Not Enough: The Disproportionate Contributions of the Poor in a Collective Action Problem |
title_full | When Fairness Is Not Enough: The Disproportionate Contributions of the Poor in a Collective Action Problem |
title_fullStr | When Fairness Is Not Enough: The Disproportionate Contributions of the Poor in a Collective Action Problem |
title_full_unstemmed | When Fairness Is Not Enough: The Disproportionate Contributions of the Poor in a Collective Action Problem |
title_short | When Fairness Is Not Enough: The Disproportionate Contributions of the Poor in a Collective Action Problem |
title_sort | when fairness is not enough: the disproportionate contributions of the poor in a collective action problem |
topic | Articles |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10585937/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37471038 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xge0001455 |
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