The role of the justice motive in economic decision making

In two studies, a dictator game was used to investigate the hypotheses that two types of justice motives should be differentiated, the need to belief in a just world and a self-attributed justice motive, that both justice motives could explain the decision for equal allocations, and that the explicit justice motive could explain the avoidance of an egoistic allocation. In Study 1, both justice motives predicted equally well the decision for an equal allocation, whereas the explicit justice motive predicted the avoidance of an egoistic allocation. A similar pattern of results emerged in Study 2. Additionally, the explicit but not the implicit justice motive covaried with social desirability, and social desirability explained the decision for equality and the avoidance of an egoistic allocation just as well as the explicit justice motive. Finally, allocation decisions were better explained in Study 2, where real money was at stake. The findings support the idea that allocation decisions can best be understood by taking the just world justice motive and social desirability into account.