DOMAIN SPECIFICITY OF FAIRNESS JUDGMENTS IN ECONOMIC TRANSACTIONS

Two studies eliciting fairness judgments about hypothetical economic t ransactions examined whether fairness judgments were influenced by who was being judged. The first study replicated the results of Kahneman et al. (Am. Econom. Rev. 76 (1986a) 728-741; J. Business 59 (1986b) S2 85-S300) that people judge certain actions by firms as unfair, but it also demonstrated that people judge parallel actions by individuals as fair. The second study suggested that people apply different standard s to individuals and firms because of presumed differences between the m in wealth, power, and size. When firms were portrayed as no more pow erful or wealthy than individuals, differences in fairness judgments w ere eliminated. Further, respondents were less inclined to judge the b ehavior of a firm harshly as perpetrator of an unfair act when the fir m was identified with an individual than when it was large and anonymo us, and they were more inclined to judge the behavior of an individual harshly as perpetrator of an unfair act when the action injured a fir m with a clearly identified individual than when the firm was large an d anonymous. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.