Unveiling the effects of hidden luck and merit on redistribution in groups

Success in life often arises from a combination of effort and being in the right place at the right time, making it difficult to disentangle the roles of merit and luck. This study explores whether revealing the unobserved performance of non-winners in unreceived opportunities influences the redistributive behavior of winners. We designed a game in which both winners and non-winners contribute to a task, but only the winners benefit from its success. A distinct feature of our design is that winning primarily depends on both initial and subsequent luck in securing opportunities, meaning winners can contribute minimally yet still achieve success. Our findings indicate that winners generally feel a strong sense of justified deservingness. The more winners contribute relative to non-winners during the production phase, the less they redistribute. However, when winners learn about non-winners’ potential performance in unreceived opportunities, redistribution significantly increases—even though this potential performance is irrelevant to the joint task. This suggests that acknowledging the potential contributions of non-winners leads to a shift in winners' perceptions of fairness. The effect remains consistent regardless of whether the task is based on luck or merit. These findings highlight the importance of considering both luck and merit in understanding redistributive behavior and suggest that recognising unobserved effort can mitigate the tendency to attribute success exclusively to one’s own contributions.