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Power, Leverage, and Fairness

When is it fair to use leverage in a negotiation? One line of my research investigates how people evaluate unequal outcomes when individuals have different levels of bargaining power. Using experimental bargaining paradigms, I find that adults often treat leverage—such as having better outside options—as a legitimate basis for unequal agreements. Strikingly, this holds even when the advantage arises from luck or bias rather than merit, suggesting that bargaining can function to legitimize inequalities that might otherwise be seen as unfair.

Consent and the Limits of Agreement

Is agreement enough to make an outcome fair? While people often view voluntary agreement as legitimizing outcomes, my research shows that this intuition breaks down under certain conditions. When bargaining power is obtained through deception or fraud, or when relevant information is concealed, individuals judge resulting agreements as less fair. These findings suggest that consent carries moral weight only when it occurs under conditions of transparency and legitimate advantage.

Developmental Origins of Fairness

How do intuitions about fairness and bargaining develop over time? I find that, unlike adults, children tend to resist treating leverage as a justification for unequal outcomes, instead favoring more equal distributions even when one party has a clear advantage. At the same time, children’s own behavior in bargaining contexts reveals a more complex pattern: they respond to power differences but do not consistently use leverage themselves. Together, these findings suggest that acceptance of inequality grounded in bargaining power may be learned over development rather than present from early in life.