Cooperation among agents of unequal social status: Constraints, expectations, and outcomes
Denise Cummins
University of California-Davis

A consistent result from studies on cooperation in experimental psychology and experimental economics is that people rarely behave in ways that are consistent with standard game-theoretic analyses of rational choice. These departures are not arbitrary but are instead an artifact of the assumptions upon which the work is based, namely; that the individuals in these transactions are autonomous agents with equal exogenous status, no prior history, and no opportunity for future transactions (i.e., that agents are blind to everything but payoffs and probabilities). Recent work suggests that individuals instead enter into transactions with a prior expectations of fairness, and their choices are constrained by these expectations. What is not agreed upon, however, is a definition of fairness, nor which factors influence judged fairness. In a series of studies, we addressed this issue. We found that perceived fairness is relationship-specific, and that two factors weigh in heavily: The perceived relative status of the individuals involved in the transaction, and the perceived permanence of the relationship.