title: Deliberation favours social efficiency by making people disregard their relative shares: evidence from USA and India.
abstract: Groups make decisions on both the production and the distribution of resources. These decisions typically involve a tension between increasing the total level of group resources (i.e. social efficiency) and distributing these resources among group members (i.e. individuals' relative shares). This is the case because the redistribution process may destroy part of the resources, thus resulting in socially inefficient allocations. Here we apply a dual-process approach to understand the cognitive underpinnings of this fundamental tension. We conducted a set of experiments to examine the extent to which different allocation decisions respond to intuition or deliberation. In a newly developed approach, we assess intuition and deliberation at both the trait level (using the Cognitive Reflection Test, henceforth CRT) and the state level (through the experimental manipulation of response times). To test for robustness, experiments were conducted in two countries: the USA and India. Despite absolute-level differences across countries, in both locations we show that: (i) time pressure and low CRT scores are associated with individuals' concerns for their relative shares and (ii) time delay and high CRT scores are associated with individuals' concerns for social efficiency. These findings demonstrate that deliberation favours social efficiency by overriding individuals' intuitive tendency to focus on relative shares.
authors.affiliation: Center for Mathematics and Computer Science (CWI), Amsterdam 1098 XG, The Netherlands; Department of Economics, Middlesex University Business School, Hendon Campus, The Burroughs, London NW4 4BT, UK.
authors.forename: Valerio
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-0579-0166
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Capraro
authors.affiliation: EMLYON Business School , University of Lyon , GATE L-SE UMR 5824, 69131 Ecully , France.
authors.forename: Brice
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Corgnet
authors.affiliation: Department of Economics , Middlesex University Business School , Hendon Campus, The Burroughs, London NW4 4BT , UK.
authors.forename: Antonio M
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Espín
authors.affiliation: Business School , University of Nottingham , Jubilee Campus, Nottingham NG8 1BB , UK.
authors.forename: Roberto
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Hernán-González
keywords: deliberation; dual-process models; efficiency; equality; intuition