Experiments test (a) whether the maximin rule (Rawls, 1971) or the utilitarian rule (Harsanyi, 1955) is preferred by subjects in concrete resource allocation decisions under some form of a "veil of ignorance", and (b) whether an original position-like decision frame in which the subject is a...

Stanford students were shown hypothetical preference profiles involving 3 to 5 voters and 2 to 6 alternatives. Profiles were constructed to test subjects' adherence to two related social choice criteria implicated in Arrow's impossibility theorem: inter-menu consistency (IMC) – which is a...