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Social Categories and Group Preference Disputes: The Aversion to Winner-Take-All Solutions

University of Michigan, smgarcia{at}umich.edu

Dale T. Miller

Stanford University

Six studies explored the hypothesis that third parties are averse to resolving preference disputes with winner-take-all solutions when disputing factions belong to different social categories (e.g. gender, nationality, firms, etc.) versus the same social category. Studies 1—3 showed that third parties' aversion to winner-take-all solutions, even when they are based on the unbiased toss of a coin, is greater when the disputed preferences correlate with social category membership than when they do not. Studies 4—6 suggested that reluctance to resolve inter-category disputes in a winner-take-all manner is motivated by a desire to minimize the affective disparity—the hedonic gap—between the winning and losing sides. The implication is that winner-take-all outcomes, even those that satisfy conditions of procedural fairness, become unacceptable when disputed preferences cleave along social category lines.

Key Words: behavioral economics • competition • decision-making • distributive justice • group disputes • social categories • social comparison

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