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Participants learned about two individuals, Alan and Bob, who got speeding tickets and either had to pay fines or work a number of community service hours (randomly assigned). For money, Bob had to pay 100 and Alan had to pay 150. Participants judged how fair it was that one got a higher ticket than the other on a -50 to 50 scale with labels at -50 [extremely favorable to Alan/extremely unfair to Bob], 0 [equally fair to Alan and Bob], and 50 [extremely unfair to Alan/extremely favorable to Bob]. For community service, Alan was given three hours of community service and Bob four hours with participants judging how fair the differential punishment was on the same -50 to 50 scale. Afterwards, participants in the money condition were told: “People sometimes think money and time should be considered interchangeable to each other. For instance, because Alan has a salary of $50/hour, his $150 traffic ticket can be considered equal to 3 hours of working time. Likewise, because Bob has a salary of $25/hour, his $100 traffic ticket can be considered equal to 4 hours of working time. Realizing this, would you still judge this situation the same way?” They were then asked how fair they thought the differential punishments were. Participants in the time condition were told: “People sometimes think money and time should be considered interchangeable to each other. For instance, because Alan has a salary of $50/hour, his 3 hours of community service can be considered equal to $150 in lost salary. Likewise, because Bob has a salary of $25/hour, his 4 hours of community service can be considered equal to $100 in lost salary. Realizing this, would you still judge this situation the same way?” They were then asked how fair they thought the differential punishments were. The critical dependent variable was the change in fairness judgments. Participants were randomly assigned to take the study in either the first or second batch of 750 participants. We analyzed the 1st 750 participants first, then the 2nd 750, then combined them into an overall analysis. Initial fairness judgments. In short, participants believed the higher punishment was more unfair to the person who incurred it. For the 1st 750 participants, the data was opened December 20, 2018 at 12:26 pm. Analyses occurred at 1:51 pm on December 20, 2018. Participants in the money condition shifted their beliefs towards equal fairness by decreasing their initial judgments (n = 374, M = -3.34, SD = 19.526) and participants in the time condition shifted their beliefs towards equal fairness by increasing their initial judgments (n = 374, M = 5.535, SD = 26. 578), a statistically significant difference between conditions (tseparate-variance (684.817) = -5.204, p < .001 d = -.381, 95%CI = -.525 to -.236). For the 2nd 750 participants the dataset was opened at 1:00pm on December 29, 2018; data analysis commenced at 11:37am on December 21, 2018. Participants in the money condition shifted their beliefs towards equal fairness by decreasing their initial judgments (n = 354, M = -4.464, SD = 23.628) and participants in the time condition shifted their beliefs towards equal fairness by increasing their initial judgments (n = 398, M = 1.907, SD = 22.051), a statistically significant difference between conditions (tseparate-variance (724.936) = -3.916, p < .001; d = -.286, 95%CI = -.43 to -.142). Data were combined into the full 1500 at 3:34pm on December 21, 2018; analyses were performed at 3:36pm on December 21, 2018. Overall, participants in the money condition shifted their initial judgments towards equal fairness (n = 728, M = -3.974, SD = 21.613). Participants in the time condition also shifted their initial judgments towards equal fairness (n = 772, M = 3.665, SD = 24.401). The difference between the time and money conditions was statistically significantly different (tseparate-variance (1492.193) = -6.426, p < .001; d = -.332, 95%CI = -.434 to -.23). The effect was not different in the 1st or 2nd 750 participants (p > .33). Thus, in this replication, reminding people that time is money caused them to shift their initial impression of fairness towards equal fairness. Final judgments, however, were still significantly different from ‘equally fair’ for both the differential fines (M = 13.74, 95%CI%bootstrap = 15.87 to 11.569) and differential hours of community service (M = -13.329, 95%CI%bootstrap = -15.321 to -11.367).
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