Reliance on fairness norms is a core feature of moral behavior and judgment, and is conceptually and empirically linked with basic personality dimensions. However, the specific nature of these links is poorly understood. In this study (N = 313, 68% female), we employed a novel third-party judgment paradigm, in which participants made moral judgments of various sharing actions of virtual others. This allowed us to capture individual variation in the relative importance of several fairness norms. We correlated these norm profiles with Big Five personality traits. We observed distinct associations between agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness, and extraversion and estimates of the importance of generosity, selfishness, relative generosity, and relative selfishness norms. Comparisons of these associations at the domain- versus facet-level of personality traits suggested these relations are specific to domain-level traits. These findings are an important step toward unraveling the complex links between fairness norms and basic personality traits.
AndrejevićM.FeuerriegelD.TurnerW.LahamS.BodeS. (2020). Moral judgements of fairness-related actions are flexibly updated to account for contextual information. Scientific Reports, 10(1), 17828. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-74975-0
2.
AshtonM. C.LeeK. (2007). Empirical, theoretical, and practical advantages of the HEXACO model of personality structure. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 11(2), 150–166. https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868306294907
3.
BerryC. M.OnesD. S.SackettP. R. (2007). Interpersonal deviance, organizational deviance, and their common correlates: A review and meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92(2), 410–424. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.92.2.410
4.
BerryK.RanaR.LockwoodA.FletcherL.PrattD. (2019). Factors associated with inattentive responding in online survey research. Personality and Individual Differences, 149, 157–159. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2019.05.043
5.
BidermanM. D.McAbeeS. T.HendyN. T.ChenZ. J. (2019). Validity of evaluative factors from Big Five and HEXACO questionnaires. Journal of Research in Personality, 80, 84–96. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2019.04.010
6.
BlountS. (1995). When social outcomes aren’t fair: The effect of causal attributions on preferences. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 63(2), 131–144. https://doi.org/10.1006/obhd.1995.1068
7.
BrocklebankS.LewisG. J.BatesT. C. (2011). Personality accounts for stable preferences and expectations across a range of simple games. Personality and Individual Differences, 51(8), 881–886. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2011.07.007
8.
BulmerM.BöhnkeJ. R.LewisG. J. (2017). Predicting moral sentiment towards physician-assisted suicide: The role of religion, conservatism, authoritarianism, and Big Five personality. Personality and Individual Differences, 105, 244–251. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2016.09.034
9.
CamererC. F. (2003a). Behavioral game theory: Experiments in strategic interaction. Princeton University Press.
CamererC. F.ThalerR. H. (1995). Anomalies: Ultimatums, dictators and manners. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 9(2), 209–219. https://doi.org/10.1257/jep.9.2.209
12.
CawleyM. J.MartinJ. E.JohnsonJ. A. (2000). A virtues approach to personality. Personality and Individual Differences, 28(5), 997–1013. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0191-8869(99)00207-X
13.
ClarkC. B.ThorneC.VannJ.CropseyK. (2014). Five-factor personality and cooperative behavior. North American Journal of Psychology, 16(3), 481.
14.
CohenT. R.PanterA. T.TuranN.MorseL.KimY. (2014). Moral character in the workplace. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 107(5), 943–963. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0037245
15.
De RaadB.Van OudenhovenJ. P. (2011). A psycholexical study of virtues in the Dutch language, and relations between virtues and personality. European Journal of Personality, 25(1), 43–52. https://doi.org/10.1002/per.777
16.
DeYoungC. G.WeisbergY. J.QuiltyL. C.PetersonJ. B. (2013). Unifying the aspects of the big five, the interpersonal circumplex, and trait affiliation. Journal of Personality, 81(5), 465–475. https://doi.org/10.1111/jopy.12020
FeatherN. T. (1999). Judgments of deservingness: Studies in the psychology of justice and achievement. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 3(2), 86–107. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327957pspr0302_1
20.
FergusonE.ZhaoK.O’CarrollR. E.SmillieL. D. (2019). Costless and costly prosociality: Correspondence among personality traits, economic preferences, and real-world prosociality. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 10(4), 461–471. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550618765071
21.
ForsytheR.HorowitzJ. L.SavinN. E.SeftonM. (1994). Fairness in simple bargaining experiments. Games and Economic Behavior, 6(3), 347–369. https://doi.org/10.1006/game.1994.1021
22.
GignacG. E.SzodoraiE. T. (2016). Effect size guidelines for individual differences researchers. Personality and Individual Differences, 102, 74–78. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2016.06.069
23.
HilbigB. E.GlöcknerA.ZettlerI. (2014). Personality and prosocial behavior: Linking basic traits and social value orientations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 107(3), 529–539. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0036074
24.
HilbigB. E.ThielmannI.WührlJ.ZettlerI. (2015). From honesty-humility to fair behavior—Benevolence or a (blind) fairness norm?Personality and Individual Differences, 80, 91–95. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2015.02.017
25.
HirshJ. B.DeYoungC. G.XuX.PetersonJ. B. (2010). Compassionate liberals and polite conservatives: Associations of agreeableness with political ideology and moral values. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36(5), 655–664. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167210366854
26.
HirshJ. B.PetersonJ. B. (2009). Extraversion, neuroticism, and the prisoner’s dilemma. Personality and Individual Differences, 46(2), 254–256. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2008.10.006
HopwoodC. J.DonnellanM. B. (2010). How should the internal structure of personality inventories be evaluated?Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14(3), 332–346. https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868310361240
29.
JohnO. P.NaumannL. P.SotoC. J. (2008). Paradigm shift to the integrative Big Five Trait taxonomy. In JohnO. P.RobinsR. W.PervinL. A. (Eds.), Handbook of personality: Theory and research (3rd ed.). The Guilford Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0191-8869(97)81000-8
30.
KroneisenM.HeckD. W. (2020). Interindividual differences in the sensitivity for consequences, moral norms, and preferences for inaction: Relating basic personality traits to the CNI model. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 46(7), 1013–1026. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167219893994
31.
KrupkaE. L.WeberR. A. (2013). Identifying social norms using coordination games: Why does dictator game sharing vary?Journal of the European Economic Association, 11(3), 495–524. https://doi.org/10.1111/jeea.12006
32.
LewisG. J.BatesT. C. (2011). From left to right: How the personality system allows basic traits to influence politics via characteristic moral adaptations. British Journal of Psychology, 102(3), 546–558. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8295.2011.02016.x
33.
LönnqvistJ. E.VerkasaloM.WalkowitzG. (2011). It pays to pay—Big Five personality influences on co-operative behaviour in an incentivized and hypothetical prisoner’s dilemma game. Personality and Individual Differences, 50(2), 300–304. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2010.10.009
MarcusB.LeeK.AshtonM. C. (2007). Personality dimensions explaining relationships between integrity tests and counterproductive behavior: Big Five, or one in addition?Personnel Psychology, 60(1), 1–34. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-6570.2007.00063.x
36.
MarshH. W.LüdtkeO.MuthénB.AsparouhovT.MorinA. J. S.TrautweinU.NagengastB. (2010). A new look at the Big Five factor structure through exploratory structural equation modeling. Psychological Assessment, 22(3), 471–491. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0019227
37.
MischkowskiD.ThielmannI.GlöcknerA. (2019). Minimizing inequality versus maximizing joint gains: On the relation between personality traits and different prosocial motivations. Journal of Research in Personality, 81, 153–157. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2019.06.001
38.
PeysakhovichA.NowakM. A.RandD. G. (2014). Humans display a “cooperative phenotype” that is domain general and temporally stable. Nature Communications, 5, 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms5939
39.
PruittD. G.KimmelM. J. (1977). Twenty years of experimental gaming: Critique, synthesis, and suggestions for the future. Annual Review of Psychology, 28(1), 363–392. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.ps.28.020177.002051
ReigstadA. G.StrømlandE. A.TinghögG. (2017). Extending the cooperative phenotype: Assessing the stability of cooperation across countries. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01990
RosseelY. (2012). lavaan: An R package for structural equation modeling. Journal of Statistical Software, 48(2), 1–93. https://doi.org/10.18637/jss.v048.i02
SimpsonA.LahamS. M.FiskeA. P. (2016). Wrongness in different relationships: Relational context effects on moral judgment. The Journal of Social Psychology, 156(6), 594–609. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224545.2016.1140118
47.
SmillieL. D.KaticM.LahamS. M. (2020). Personality and moral judgment: Curious consequentialists and polite deontologists. Manuscript submitted for publication.
48.
SotoC. J.JohnO. P. (2016). The next Big Five Inventory (BFI-2): Developing and assessing a hierarchical model with 15 facets to enhance bandwidth, fidelity, and predictive power. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 110(3), 1–27. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000096
49.
SzucsD.IoannidisJ. P. A. (2017). When null hypothesis significance testing is unsuitable for research: A reassessment. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 11. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2017.00390
50.
TaoY.CaiY.RanaC.ZhongY. (2020). The impact of the extraversion-introversion personality traits and emotions in a moral decision-making task. Personality and Individual Differences, 158(March 2019). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2020.109840
51.
TettR. P.GutermanH. A. (2000). Situation trait relevance, trait expression, and cross-situational consistency: Testing a principle of trait activation. Journal of Research in Personality, 34(4), 397–423. https://doi.org/10.1006/jrpe.2000.2292
52.
ThielmannI.SpadaroG.BallietD. (2020). Personality and prosocial behavior: A theoretical framework and meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 146(1), 30–90. https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000217
YamagishiT.LiY.TakagishiH.MatsumotoY.KiyonariT. (2014). In search of homo economicus. Psychological Science, 25(9), 1699–1711. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797614538065
55.
YamagishiT.MifuneN.LiY.ShinadaM.HashimotoH.HoritaY.MiuraA.InukaiK.TanidaS.KiyonariT.TakagishiH.SimunovicD. (2013). Is behavioral pro-sociality game-specific? Pro-social preference and expectations of pro-sociality. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 120(2), 260–271. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2012.06.002
56.
Zeigler-HillV.NoserA. E.RoofC.VonkJ.MarcusD. K. (2015). Spitefulness and moral values. Personality and Individual Differences, 77, 86–90. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2014.12.050
57.
ZhaoK.FergusonE.SmillieL. D. (2017). Individual differences in good manners rather than compassion predict fair allocations of wealth in the dictator game. Journal of Personality, 85(2), 244–256. https://doi.org/10.1111/jopy.12237
58.
ZhaoK.KashimaY.SmillieL. (2018). From windfall sharing to property ownership: Prosocial personality traits in giving and taking dictator games. Games, 9(2), 30. https://doi.org/10.3390/g9020030
59.
ZhaoK.SmillieL. D. (2015). The role of interpersonal traits in social decision making: Exploring sources of behavioral heterogeneity in economic games. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 19(3), 277–302. https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868314553709
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
