Existing research indicates that happy people are helpful, cooperative, and socially responsible, and cognizant of multiple social perspectives in their interactions with others (e.g., Isen 1970; Isen and Levin 1972). Furthermore, this ability of happy people to consider the social situation more fully is not at the cost of them maintaining their own self-perspective. Such actions and thoughts, that reflect consideration of both, the self and the other, perspectives, furthermore, are consistent with the notion of fairness. It appears, therefore, that positive affect might increase concern for fairness; however, no research until now has investigated this relationship directly.
This dissertation, through seven experiments, a pretest, and a pilot study, takes a preliminary step towards investigating whether positive affect increases thoughts and actions that reflect fairness. In the first four experiments, designed in a consumer context, participants in positive or neutral affect evaluated promotional offers with no, unfair, or fair, restrictions. Individuals in positive affect did not differ in their evaluation of a promotion that contained a fair restriction and no restriction, but showed lowered liking of promotions with unfair restrictions, compared to controls. Furthermore, participants in positive affect listed more thoughts related to fairness and listed these thoughts sooner than controls. Among controls, priming concepts related to fairness decreased liking of the unfair offer.
The remaining experiments assessed whether participants in positive affect also applied fairness to their behavior. Participants made resource-allocation decisions during ultimatum situations, and decided how to split a sum of money (with their unknown co-player). Results indicated that participants in positive affect, more than controls, split the resources equally, and that this was not due to self-presentation issues, or from enhanced risk aversion.
These findings, taken together, are consistent with the idea that positive affect increases thoughts and actions relating to fairness. The results are also consistent with research showing that positive affect enhances cognitive flexibility and that it leads to careful thinking.
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