Premium
Fairness, Self‐Interest, and Cooperation in a Real‐Life Conflict 1
Author(s) -
Müller Markus M.,
Kals Elisabeth,
Maes Jürgen
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
journal of applied social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1559-1816
pISSN - 0021-9029
DOI - 10.1111/j.1559-1816.2007.00322.x
Subject(s) - perspective (graphical) , psychology , social psychology , settlement (finance) , self interest , economic justice , conflict of interest , microeconomics , economics , political science , law , finance , artificial intelligence , computer science , payment
Effects of procedural fairness and self‐interest on cooperation vs. hardness in an urban planning conflict were examined in a questionnaire study. The self‐interest perspective posits that people seek to maximize their outcomes and, therefore, cooperate only when they can gain advantages or avoid disadvantages by doing so, while fairness models of cooperation view cooperative actions as based mainly on justice motives. The data give strong support for the fairness hypothesis, showing that self‐interest accounts only for hard strategies, whereas justice motives explain a considerable part of cooperation. The impact of the results on further research on social conflicts and their settlement, as well as the elaboration of models of fairness in the social psychology of conflicts are discussed.