Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Fairness, Equity, and Justice

This volume brings together cutting-edge research from scientists representing a variety of disciplines that bears on human preferences for fairness, equity and justice. Humans are an exceptionally 'prosocial' species. Despite predictions derived from evolutionary and economic theories that individuals will behave in the service of maximizing their own utility and ultimately, survival and reproductive success, humans not only behave cooperatively, but in many instances, altruistically, giving to unrelated others at a cost to themselves. They also seem preoccupied like no other species with issues of fairness, equity and justice. But what exactly is fair and how are norms of fairness maintained? Understanding how prosocial norms are

maintained, expressed and contextually shifted within and across societies has been a recent

concern among researchers from a variety of fields, most notably, psychology, economics,variable aspects of prosocial behavior.

This volume explores issues such as how humans regard and determine what exactly is fair, the ontogeny (i.e., development) of morality, preferences for efficiency versus equity, behavioral and neurobiological responses to fairness and unfairness, contextual and priming effects on allocation behaviors, especially relating to the real-world problem of the allocation of scarce medical resources, gender-specific variation in equity and justice, and fairness in crosscultural context. The ultimate goal of the book is to describe, explain and ultimately illuminate the singular concern of the human species with fairness, equity and justice.

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