That’s not fair! unfair treatment spills over into individual risky financial decisions

Abstract

Studies indicate that experiencing unfairness may influence subsequent decisions. There is initial evidence that this is also true for gambling decisions made after an experience of unfair treatment in a financial domain. The presented studies test whether this can be extended to other domains of financial risk-taking, such as investments. Moreover, we aim to investigate whether the effects of such experience in one domain generalize to other domains. Three experimental studies were conducted to investigate how unfair treatment coming from varied domains affects individuals’ propensities to make risky investment and gambling choices in subsequent tasks. The experience of being a victim or a beneficiary of unfair treatment in financial and non-financial domains was induced and the propensity to take investment and gambling risks was measured. The results of the experiments indicated that the experience of unfairness influences the propensity to make risky financial choices but the domain in which it is experienced plays an important role. Being a victim of financial unfairness makes people more prone to take investment risk and build riskier investing portfolios with more stocks and fewer bonds than when they are beneficiaries or when they are treated fairly. Moreover, being the beneficiary of unfair treatment in a financial domain makes people less prone to choose a sure option (vs risky) in lottery tasks. The abovementioned relationships are exactly the opposite when the experience of (un)fairness comes from a task in a non-financial context. Specifically, the experience of unfair treatment in a non-financial domain leads people to be less prone to make risky investment choices, and it enhances the propensity to build safer investment portfolios with more bonds and fewer stocks than people from the unfair-beneficiary and fair groups. Furthermore, being the beneficiary of unfair treatment in a non-financial context makes people more prone to choose sure option in lottery task.