Procedural fairness facilitates cooperative behavior by enhancing cooperative expectations

Two experiments were conducted to explore whether and why procedural fairness may promote cooperation. In both experiments, participants first took part in a task in which they were connected to an allocator who then either selected a fair or an unfair procedure for allocating outcomes between them. After this manipulation of procedural fairness, participants performed a second task in which we studied their cooperation in a chicken game. In Experiment 1, participants were informed that their opponent in the chicken game was the same person who had previously selected the fair (vs. unfair) procedure. In Experiment 2, participants learned that their opponent in the chicken game had not been involved in the selection of the prior procedure. Both studies showed that having experienced a fair (vs. unfair) procedure facilitated subsequent cooperation in the chicken game. Mediation analyses suggest that this positive effect was explained by the finding that the prior experience of procedural fairness induced participants to expect higher levels of cooperation from their opponent, even when this opponent was not involved in the prior experience of procedural fairness.