Social Comparison and Fairness

Abstract

People care about fairness. They care about the fairness of their outcomes (distributive justice) and the fairness of the procedures used to allocate outcomes (procedural justice). Fairness can have implications for current outcomes (e.g., "Did I get what I deserved?"), expected outcomes (e.g., "If nothing changes, what am I likely to get in the future?"), and plans about how to obtain outcomes (e.g., "What can I do to improve my expected future outcomes?").