Social Categories and Group Preference Disputes: The Aversion to Winner-Take-All Solutions

Abstract

Six studies explored the hypothesis that third parties are averse to resolving preference disputes with winner-take-all solutions when disputing factions belong to different social categories (e.g., gender, nationality, firms, etc.). Studies 1-3 provided empirical support for the claim that third parties' aversion to winner-take-all solutions, even when they are based on the unbiased toss of a coin, is greater when the disputed preferences correlate with social category membership. Studies 4-6 suggested that reluctance to resolve inter-category disputes in a winner-take-all manner is motivated by a desire to minimize the affective disparity - the hedonic gap - between the winning and losing sides. The implication is that winner-take-all outcomes, even those that satisfy conditions of procedural fairness, become unacceptable when disputed preferences cleave along social category lines.

Keywords: Social categories, decision making, group disputes, behavioral economics, competition, social comparison, distributive justice

JEL Classification: C78, C71, C72, D74, M10, L20, L14, K33, J71