Rawlsian maximin rule operates as a common cognitive anchor in distributive justice and risky decisions.
Distributive justice concerns the moral principles by which we seek to allocate resources fairly among diverse members of a society. Although the concept of fair allocation is one of the fundamental building blocks for societies, there is no clear consensus on how to achieve "socially just" allocations. Here, we examine neurocognitive commonalities of distributive judgments and risky decisions. We explore the hypothesis that people's allocation decisions for others are closely related to economic decisions for oneself at behavioral, cognitive, and neural levels, via a concern about the minimum, worst-off position. In a series of experiments using attention-monitoring and brain-imaging techniques, we investigated this "maximin" concern (maximizing the minimum possible payoff) via responses in two seemingly disparate tasks: third-party distribution of rewards for others, and choosing gambles for self. The experiments revealed three robust results: (i) participants' distributive choices closely matched their risk preferences-"Rawlsians," who maximized the worst-off position in distributions for others, avoided riskier gambles for themselves, whereas "utilitarians," who favored the largest-total distributions, preferred riskier but more profitable gambles; (ii) across such individual choice preferences, however, participants generally showed the greatest spontaneous attention to information about the worst possible outcomes in both tasks; and (iii) this robust concern about the minimum outcomes was correlated with activation of the right temporoparietal junction (RTPJ), the region associated with perspective taking. The results provide convergent evidence that social distribution for others is psychologically linked to risky decision making for self, drawing on common cognitive-neural processes with spontaneous perspective taking of the worst-off position.
Department of Social Psychology, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan; tkameda@l.u-tokyo.ac.jp.
Tatsuya
T
Kameda
Institute of Social and Economic Research, Osaka University, Osaka 567-0047, Japan.
Keigo
K
Inukai
Institute for Biomedical Sciences, Iwate Medical University, Iwate 028-3694, Japan.
Satomi
S
Higuchi
Department of Social Psychology, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan; School of Medicine, Juntendo University, Tokyo 113-8421, Japan.
Akitoshi
A
Ogawa
Department of Psychology, Korea University, Seoul 136-701, Korea.
Hackjin
H
Kim
Brain Research Institute, Tamagawa University, Tokyo 194-8610, Japan.
Tetsuya
T
Matsuda
Brain Research Institute, Tamagawa University, Tokyo 194-8610, Japan.
Masamichi
M
Sakagami
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000465:Algorithms; D002755:Choice Behavior; D003071:Cognition; D003657:Decision Making; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D012306:Risk; D012935:Social Justice / Q000523:psychology*; D055815:Young Adult
distributive justice; maximin rule; perspective taking; right temporoparietal junction; risky decisions
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