We zijn druk, druk, druk : Wat blijft er over van rechtvaardigheid?

In today’s busy society, people have less and less time. In the current paper we argue that busy people are more influenced by egocentric issues than by issues that are justice related. Several social psychological experiments support this suggestion. Furthermore, we discuss in this paper the mechanism that may explain people’s reactions to being overpaid. We suggest a two-phase model of reactions to the conflict between justice and egoism. Specifically, we propose that when people are better paid than comparable other persons, judging the advantage of receiving an advantageous outcome is quick and easy as preferences are primary. We further propose that adjusting this appraisal requires cognitive resources as it entails integrating fairness concerns with the initial preference appraisal

The moral superiority effect: Self versus other differences in satisfaction with being overpaid

This paper focuses on how people think about their own and other’s reactions to being overpaid. Two experiments investigate the discrepancy between people’s own satisfaction and their perception of other’s satisfaction with overpayment. The results of both experiments support our hypothesis that people think others are more satisfied with being overpaid than they are themselves. Our results are consistent with the idea that people think others are more influenced by egoism-based considerations whereas they themselves are more influenced by considerations of right and wrong. In other words, people show amoral superiority effect. In the general discussion, we argue why it is less likely to find moral superiority effects on people’s reactions to being equally paid and underpaid, and we relate our findings to the literature of self-serving biases