Cognitive load and social planning decision-making

Recently, evidence has shown that feeling to have less than one needs impairs an individual’s cognitive resources and in turn, influences how we decide on others. Motivated by the breadth of the concept of scarcity, this experimental study assesses the effect of cognitive depletion on inequality preferences of social planners and how losses and gains affect our decisions on others. In their role as social planners, participants were asked to redistribute a previously incurred gain or loss between two parties. How subjects redistribute the gains or losses gives valuable insights into their inequality preferences. In two treatments, a cognitive depletion task preceded the allocation decision. The study finds no evidence for an effect of cognitive depletion on the inequality preferences of social planners. Moreover, it seems that social planners show an increased tendency toward inequality when they decide on losses, as compared to when they decide on gains. However, this effect is sensitive to cases of extreme reallocation.