PREFERENCE FOR OBJECTIVE VS. SUBJECTIVE INFORMATION ANALYSIS AND RESOURCE ALLOCATION DECISIONS IN ECONOMIC, TEAM, AND DEPENDENCE SITUATIONS

This study was designed to investigate the relationship between a person's preference for objective or subjective analysis of information, as measured by the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, and the distributive justice principle used to make resource allocation decisions in three situations (economic, team, and dependence). The hypothesis that judging types would reach decisions faster than Perceptive types was also tested.; The subjects were students enrolled in courses in psychology and educational psychology at Mississippi State University. A counterbalanced repeated measures design was used to investigate the hypotheses. The results of the 2 x 3 analysis of variance used to evaluate the relationship between information analysis preference and situation revealed no significant differences between preference for objective versus subjective analysis of information but a strong difference for resource allocation scores among situations. A supplementary analysis using a Cochran Q-test revealed the specific use of each principle in each situation. Equity was used in the situations involving the distribution of bonus income (economic); parity was used in the situation involving scholarship division by a basketball team (team); and in the dependence situation, where food was allocated to starving persons, both equity and need were used. It was concluded the situation was the major determinant of the type of distributive justice principle used to allocate resources in each of the three situations.; The secondary hypothesis that Judging types would make allocation decisions more quickly than Perceptive types was not supported. it is thought that the unit of measure used (the minute) was too coarse to detect any differences in decision-making time. Further research is indicated using more accurate measurement and tasks in which time is more critical.; The findings are important for the fields of psychology and educational psychology because they lend support to a multiple principle model of distributive justice. In addition, the numerical measurement of resource allocation, in itself, provides a new tool which may be used to determine the distributive justice principle used to allocate resources.