We let those with more power keep it

Is it morally right that someone with a stronger negotiating position should get a better deal on a house, or a holiday, or a loan? Most people would probably answer, 'Of course not!' But a study on a total of more than 3,000 people in the US suggests that, in practice, we tend to believe the opposite. In this work, in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, the researchers argue that in the real world, this bias could help to create and perpetuate inequality.

Arthur Le Pargneux at the University of Warwick and Fiery Cushman at Harvard University created seven scenarios involving two people faced with a situation in which one of them has to do something unpleasant that will benefit them both. In each case, one character also has more at stake — and so less bargaining power. For example: 'Frank accidentally dropped his wedding ring down the well. Sam accidentally dropped a cheap watch down the well. To get their items back, one of them has to go down the well and get muddy while the other holds the rope.' In this case, Frank has less bargaining power and is in a weaker negotiating position.

In the first of a series of experiments, participants decided how morally appropriate it would be for one of the characters to ask the other to do the job. So, for example, how morally acceptable it would be for Frank to ask Sam to go down the well — or vice versa. In a second experiment, the researchers took a slightly different tack, and asked how morally inappropriate it would be for each of the characters to refuse to do the unpleasant task.

Le Pargneux and Cushman found that asking the other person to perform the action or explicitly refusing to do it were both seen as being more morally appropriate for the character with greater bargaining power.

In the third experiment, which featured the same scenarios, the team found that the degree of the power imbalance between two characters mattered much less than the fact that an imbalance existed. For example, whether Frank was described as having dropped "his bracelet", or a "gold chain given to him by his wife" or "his wedding ring" down the well didn't affect how morally inappropriate participants thought it would be for him to ask Sam, who'd dropped a cheap watch, to be the one to grab the rope.

Le Pargneux and Cushman then tried out some different scenarios in which one character had more bargaining power because if the pair of them failed to agree on who would do the unpleasant task, they had better alternatives. For example, Brian and George were described as businessmen who wanted to finalise an important deal. To do this, one had to spend an entire day driving to the other's office. The reader was told that if George didn't do it, his business would be at risk, while if Brian didn't do it, he'd just do a similar deal with someone else. In this case, Brian had more bargaining power. And Le Pargneux and Cushman found that the participants felt it was more morally appropriate for George to make the long journey.

Overall, the findings from these studies are broadly consistent with what are known as 'contractualist' views of moral thinking. According to this view, our ideas about what an actual discussion about the relative merits of various options would conclude guide our tacit agreements about what should happen — and, it seems, our views about the moral appropriateness of a particular course of action.

But, as the researchers note, this could lead to some decidedly undesirable outcomes. "If at least some of our moral judgements are contractualist, and we have a tendency to be more lenient towards people in better bargaining positions (who are already likely to be better off) and morally stricter with people in worse positions (who are likely to already be already worse off) then this could make for unfair outcomes." Their work could therefore have implications for understanding how inequalities in society develop and are maintained.

To take the business scenario as an example, people felt that it was morally appropriate that Brian, who had more business partners (and so who was better off than George) should exert less effort to reap the same benefits from the deal. In the real world, the researchers write, this attitude would further exacerbate the initial inequality, in a 'rich get richer' dynamic.

And this leads them to their final conclusion from the work overall: "Combating inequality may require going against some of our moral intuitions and a natural inertia that favors those who are already better off."

Read the paper in full:
Le Pargneux, A., & Cushman, F. (2025). Moral judgment is sensitive to bargaining power. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 154(1), 263–278. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001678

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