Inaccurate beliefs about procedural fairness often motivate people to act in self-serving and selfish manners. We investigate whether information about a level playing field might mitigate such behaviors. In a pre-registered behavioral experiment (n = 444), using a competitive and real-effort task, we manipulate whether participants are informed about the fairness of a competition or not. Following the competition, participants (who either won or lost the competition) decided how to distribute earnings between themselves and their opponent. We show that informing participants about the fairness of the competition reduces selfish behavior among losers, while behavior among winners remains unaffected. Moreover, we show that losers who were not informed about the fairness of the competition incorrectly viewed it as having been unfairly stacked against them (i.e., believing that they encountered significantly more difficult tasks than their opponents). Our findings suggest that information about a level playing field reduces selfish behavior and is important for understanding when and why motivated reasoning about procedural fairness helps people uphold a positive self-image.

对程序公平的不准确信念往往会促使人们以自私自利的方式行事。我们调查有关公平竞争环境的信息是否可以减轻此类行为。在预先注册的行为实验中 ( n = 444），使用竞争性和实际努力的任务，我们操纵参与者是否被告知竞争的公平性。比赛结束后，参与者（无论是赢了还是输了）决定如何在自己和对手之间分配收入。我们表明，告知参与者竞争的公平性会减少失败者的自私行为，而获胜者的行为不受影响。此外，我们表明，没有被告知比赛公平性的失败者错误地认为比赛对他们不利（即认为他们遇到的任务比对手困难得多）。