The Aversion to Inequality in the Ultimatum Game Increases When Effort Has Been Invested in Producing the Distributed Resource

Disadvantageous inequality aversion is considered a universal human tendency, probably because it serves as a mechanism to motivate continuous cooperation by punishing behaviors that are perceived as unfair; however, it can change depending on the circumstances, such as social norms, values, power relations, and hierarchies, all of which are part of the social and cultural contexts of the cooperative interactions. One such condition is the effort invested in the cooperation. This study investigates the effect of effort on inequality aversion, with the hypothesis that in interchanges in which people have invested effort to produce the resource under distribution, the inequality aversion will increase compared to situations with no effort involved. This is an experimental study using a version of the Ultimatum Game (UG) under three conditions: 1) with resource distribution resulting from shared effort, 2) without information about the origin of the resources, and 3) with resources that required no effort. In general, the data obtained suggest that in the UG with effort, inequality is rejected more than in the conditions without effort and without information about the origin of the distributed goods. The effort invested in producing a resource or gain can make people more inclined to reject inequality in interdependent relationships and, therefore, more likely to impose costly punishment on their counterparts.