This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Envy plays a greater role when resources are allocated through majority voting than when we make decisions individually. This is shown by new research from Linköping University, Sweden.
According to the researchers, the explanation may be that our sense of personal responsibility diminishes when an individual vote is unlikely to determine the outcome. "This is not an argument against democracy. But when we make collective decisions, we are driven a little more by envy.
The fact that it shows up so clearly in an experiment tells us that there is good and bad in everything," says Gustav Tinghög, professor of economics at the Department of Management and Engineering at Linköping University. The research was carried out in two stages. The first included 574 students from a Swedish university.
This was followed by a larger study of 1,176 English-speaking participants, which produced the same results as the first study. The findings are published in the European Economic Review. In both studies, participants were asked to choose between different ways of dividing money between themselves and another person.
One option always involved an equal split. In the other option, the distribution varied in different ways, favoring either one party or the other. Participants were randomly assigned to groups.
In one group, each participant made an individual decision. In the other, participants voted on which allocation should be implemented, with the majority decision determining the outcome. The results of both studies point clearly in the same direction.
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