Punishing an “unfair” leader: People as pragmatic politicians with in-group but fair-but-biased prosecutors with out-group

Abstract

Contrary to the fairness expected in the modern world, people seem to treat in-group members (us) better than out-group members (them). Do people then defend in-group members as politicians but prosecute out-group members in a fair-but-biased manner? Given information about injustices by a male or female manager, participants made outrage, attribution, attitude, and punishment responses to the manager. In-group defence held in the first three responses but fairness in punishment. However, the seeming fairness in punishment arose from bias suppression by outrage and mediation by attitude, and the order of mediation was from outrage to attitude and not vice versa. Keywords: Fairness, In-group defence, Out-group prosecution, Suppression, Sequential mediation, Punishment