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prescribes that all team members should suffer or benefit equally, regardless of input.53 The need method (or welfare-based justice) prescribes that benefits (and costs) should be proportional to members’ needs.54

Groups that emphasize productivity favor equity rules, but there is little evidence that equity actually facilitates productivity in groups. Equity facilitates productivity in groups whose members have an independent (i.e., self-interested) self-construal as opposed to an interdependent construal.55 Another problem is that some people often feel more entitled than others do. For example, team members who contribute less prefer to divide resources equally, whereas those who contribute more prefer the equity rule.56 In groups contain- ing members with different power or status levels, those with low power want equality, whereas those with high power desire equity.57 In short, most people feel entitled to more resources than others believe that they merit. Oftentimes, this is driven by egocentric valuations of one’s own contributions to a joint task. For example, in one investigation, team members were asked to complete several questionnaires.58 These took either 45 or 90 minutes. The questionnaires were constructed such that for each duration some par- ticipants completed six questionnaires, whereas others completed only three. When asked to allocate monetary rewards, participants emphasized the dimension that favored them in the allocation procedure (those who worked longer emphasized time; questionnaire completion was emphasized by those who worked on more questionnaires). Most people, however, are not aware that their own perceptions of fairness are egocentrically biased.

There is no objectively correct method of justice. In fact, teams often have several different methods in operation at any one time. For example, consider a study group in a semester-long course. Team members may assign work on a joint project on the basis of equity, such that people with greater experience and skills in a certain subject area are expected to bring more knowledge to the task (e.g., the finance major might be expected to read the financial report individually, perform all the calculations, and develop a spreadsheet by himself or herself). In terms of reserving study group rooms and bringing snacks for group meetings, the group might use an equality method, such that each week a different group member is expected to supply drinks and cookies and reserve a room. This group occasionally might invoke a need-based justice system when, for example, a study group member misses three group meetings in preparation for a wedding. The rest of the group may agree to cover his or her work so that the teammate can prepare for the wedding. The question of how to reduce self-serving, or egoistic, judgments of entitlements in teams is vexing. While it would seem that perspective tak- ing may minimize egocentric judgments, people who are encouraged to consider the perspectives of others increase their egoistic (selfish) behavior, such that they actually

55Goncalo, J. A., & Kim, S. H. (2010). Distributive justice beliefs and group idea generation: Does a belief in equity facilitate productivity? Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46(5), 836–840. 56Allison, S., & Messick, D. (1990). Social decision heuristics and the use of shared resources. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 3, 195–204. 57Komorita, S., & Chertkoff, J. (1973). A bargaining theory of coalition formation. Psychological Review, 80, 149– 162; Shaw, M. E. (1981). Group dynamics: The psychology of small group behavior (3rd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. 58Van Avermaet, E. (1975). Equity: A theoretical and experimental analysis. Doctoral dissertation, University of California, Santa Barbara.

54Deutsch, M. (1975). Equity, equality, and need: What determines which value will be used as the basis of distributive justice? Journal of Social Issues, 31, 137–149.

53Messick, D. (1993). Equality as a decision heuristic. In B. A. Mellers & J. Baron (Eds.), Psychological perspectives on justice (pp. 11–31). New York: Cambridge University Press.

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