The social psychology of being better off than others

Abstract

Justice is one of the most fundamental topics in the history of humankind and is still a present-day topic that is important to many people. Justice concerns everyone, and is therefore omnipresent and hugely important. This thesis deals with research in the area of distributive justice to provide greater insight into the social psychology of being better off than others. In particular, the present thesis uses equity theory, first formulated by Adams (1965), to explain people’s reactions to their advantages. In doing so, this thesis focuses on how people deal with being better off than others by studying people’s reactions to being overpaid as defined in equity theory. Equity theory has examined what people think is equitable and fair and how people react to equitable and inequitable outcomes. The basic justice principle underlying equity theory is a balance between contributions and rewards of two persons. Equity theory distinguishes between equitable and inequitable outcome distributions. Equity exists for people whenever they perceive that the ratio of their inputs to outcomes is equal to the input-outcome ratio of another person. To illustrate, it is generally perceived as equitable and fair if two people who have worked equally hard (the input) receive an equal amount of money for their work (the outcome). Inequity results for people not only when they are relatively underpaid (receiving less and/or contributing more than a comparable other), but also when they are relatively overpaid (receiving more and/or contributing less than a comparable other). On the basis of equity theory, it can be argued that, when forming judgments of outcome satisfaction, individuals who are faced with equity will be satisfied and individuals who are faced with underpayment will be dissatisfied. Interestingly, overpayment leads people to feel moderately satisfied. Overpaid people are less satisfied than equitably paid people but more satisfied than underpaid people. A major proposition of this thesis is that people who are confronted with being overpaid have to deal with conflicting social motives when forming judgments of outcome satisfaction. On the one hand it is nice to receive a relatively high outcome, but on the other hand the situation is unfair and inequitable. This thesis proposes that overpaid people are in conflict between their egoism-based pleasure of receiving a relatively high outcome and their fairness-based feeling of being unjustly advantaged. In twelve studies I have tried to get support for this proposition and the implications that may follow from it. These twelve studies can be classified in four chapters and the four chapters can be subdivided into two parts: a socially oriented part (Chapters 2 and 5) and a process-oriented part (Chapters 3 and 4).