Social norms of fairness with reputation-based role assignment in the dictator game

TL;DR

This paper explores how social norms, especially reputation-based role assignment, influence fairness in the dictator game, revealing that certain norms promote high fairness levels through a theoretical analysis.

Contribution

It introduces a model combining reputation and role assignment in the dictator game, analyzing the impact of social norms on fairness evolution.

Findings

Four leading norms promote high fairness with reputation-based role assignment.

Fairness increases with selection intensity under certain norms.

Distinguishing justified and unjustified unfair splits is crucial for fairness evolution.

Abstract

A vast body of experiments share the view that social norms are major factors for the emergence of fairness in a population of individuals playing the dictator game (DG). Recently, to explore which social norms are conducive to sustaining cooperation has obtained considerable concern. However, thus far few studies have investigated how social norms influence the evolution of fairness by means of indirect reciprocity. In this study, we propose an indirect reciprocal model of the DG and consider that an individual can be assigned as the dictator due to its good reputation. We investigate the `leading eight' norms and all second-order social norms by a two-timescale theoretical analysis. We show that when role assignment is based on reputation, four of the `leading eight' norms, including stern judging and simple standing, lead to a high level of fairness, which increases with the selection intensity. Our work also reveals that not only the correct treatment of making a fair split with good recipients but also distinguishing unjustified unfair split from justified unfair split matters in elevating the level of fairness.