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