Framing Perceptions of Justice in a Public Goods Dilemma

In a social dilemma, group members have equal access to collective resources, but each must decide between acting in self-interested or collectively interested ways when considering their contribution the group. Our research focused on how perceived fairness of contributions and outcomes affects these decisions. We report an experiment that manipulated two factors related fairness: dilemma-framing emphasized either individual gains, whether partner’s relative was high, low, subject’s. Also, subjects’ value orientations—individualist vs. prosocial—were balanced across conditions. Subjects made rounds decisions received feedback after each. As hypothesized for first-round contributions, prosocials contributed more public goods framing had no discernable effect. second round, neither orientation nor influenced participants’ evaluations partners low initial group, affected partner high Importantly, results generally supported key hypotheses attempts rectify injustices via subsequent bonus sharing. Partner’s orientation, all redistributive behaviors.