Shall We Dislike The Advantageous Inequity?The Moderating Effect Of Options On Advantageous Inequity Aversion

Inequity aversion means that individuals resist inequitable outcomes;that is they are willing to give up some material payoff to move in the direction of more equitable outcomes(Fehr&Schmidt,1999).Accordingly,the inequity can occur in two directions:the advantageous inequity(i.e.receiving more than others)and disadvantageous inequity(i.e.receiving less than others).There are great strides have been made in understanding why people reduce disadvantageous inequity,yet the reason why individual dislike advantageous inequity remains unclear.The most frequently used paradigm in understanding advantageous inequity is letting one participant decide how to split a sum of money between himself and another participant.Another way is to observe how fair is the offer proposed by proposer in Ultimatum Game and its modified version Dictator Game.No matter which paradigm to choose,a body of empirical researches suggests that the participants always share 40%offer to another.Combined with recent ERP studies,it seems reasonable that individuals resist inequity;even it is in their favor(e.g.advantageous inequity).However,a discrepancy emerges if we turn our attention to another stream of research.In one study,participants rated advantageous inequity offer(6.25 points)more favorable than equal(5 points)and disadvantageous inequity offer(3.81 points)(Wu,Zhang,Elieson,&Zhou,2012).Similarly,Moser,Gaertig and Ruz(2014)found that responders accepted more advantageous inequity(97.9%)than equal offers(91.4%)in Ultimatum Game.Wu,Zhou,van Dijk,Leliveld and Zhou(2011)further suggested that the responders would not reject(the rejection ratio below 20%)the offer outperforming average level.This stream of research seems to indicate that individual show preference for advantageous inequity rather than inequity.This paper was inspired by what appears to be a discrepancy in the literatures on inequity aversion.The behavioral data derived from several studies seem to imply that individual prefer advantageous inequity,which is inconsistent with traditional studies.A difference between their paradigms,namely "options",may play a pivotal role in producing such discrepancy.To clarify it,this paper suggests investigating how participants' "options" modulate the evaluation for advantageous inequity.We predict that the aversion to advantageous inequity is reduced in "no options" condition.