Norms of Fairness in Inter-Individual Versus Inter-Team Interactions : The Effects of Egocentric Biases and Gender

Understanding norms of fairness is essential for explaining many phenomena in organizations. Using a dictator game, we examine the behavior of individuals who are given the responsibility of individually making an allocation decision on behalf of a two-person group in a dictator game without consultation. We find that men are significantly more self-interested and less fair when they are responsible for a group, while women behave similarly under both conditions. Both males and females underestimate the fairness of others whose decisions can affect their earnings, but only among females are self-predictions significantly greater than expectations of others. In sum, other-regarding considerations may affect decisions in radically different ways depending not only on whether the decision is made on behalf of an individual or group, but also on the way the group decision is operationalized, whether the decision is hypothetical or real, and on the gender of the decision makers