Removing the Egocentric Bias: The Relevance of Distress Cues to Evaluation of Fairness

This investigation examines the hypothesis that the egocentric bias may be removed if the psychological distress of the coworker is made salient. The design was a 2 X 2 X 2 completely randomized factorial with the amount of reward (overreward versus underreward), type of relationship (friends versus strangers),and salience of a coworker's distress (no distress message versus distress message) as the three independent variables. The results indicated that the egocentric bias (significant differences between underrewarded and overrewarded subjects' evaluations of fairness) was found when the coworker's distress was not made evident. The bias was eliminated, however, when the distress of the coworker was made known through a message. An explanation of how the equity formulation can account for these findings is provided.