Resource Types and Fairness Perceptions in Social Dilemmas

Chapter
First Online:
Part of the Critical Issues in Social Justice book series (CISJ)

Abstract

The purpose stated by Barry Markovsky and Nick Berigan in this chapter is to link the social dilemmas and justice research areas and SRT. Situations in which individual and collective interests conflict are focused in social dilemma theorizing, while justice situations involve judgments of fairness and responses to perceived unfairness. Studying justice within social dilemma situations allows the authors to examine how perceptions of fairness influence cooperative behavior. By incorporating SRT, they are able to study the nature of different dilemmas, given the social resources that are exchanged, and how social resources impact perceptions of fairness differentially. After translating SRT into exchange models via N-player game theory, Markovsky and Berigan use a justice equation from Markovsky’s (American Sociological Review, 50, 822–839, 1985.) multilevel justice theory to model evaluations of fairness. They conclude by proposing laboratory experiments that incorporate social resources with social dilemmas and justice.

Keywords

Public Good Distributive Justice Social Dilemma Resource Type Initial Endowment 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media New York 2012

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Department of SociologyUniversity of South CarolinaColumbiaUSA

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